Owning Social Media Is NOT Your Job

Nothing is more frustrating than talking to someone who completely takes over the conversation, giving little to no time to share your own insights and thoughts. We've all met someone like this in life and we all make the effort to refrain from engaging with them. To say that we'd rather not speak to people like that is an understatement. If this is unacceptable for your real life engagement, why would it be any different online?

This is something I see all too often. In the world of online engagement, the conversation is real, the people (more often than not) are real, the only thing different is the medium through which the conversation is being channeled. Still, we're seeing marketers overreach their authority by claiming full control over social media channels on behalf of a company. This completely neuters the overall depth and insight your company could be capable of.

Why is Social Media Assigned to Marketing Departments?

In a recent Twitter chat, #speakchat, host, Michele Price, had guest, Olivier Blanchard, discuss this as one of many topics for the night. Olivier shared four points on why companies so quickly allow the marketing department to handle social media engagement.

1. Because the term "media" tends to fall intuit he realm of media management functions, hence, marketing.
2. Because social media deals with communicating, again in the operational realm of marketing.
3. Because marketers want to OWN the conversation…to market.
4. Because most companies need to assign it to someone (the marketing department comes to mind very easily).

These are some very general points, but take a look at how some of your clients have assigned social media, or how companies you've been involved with have thought of social media. More than likely because it had to be done by someone, it was given to the marketing department.

Words of Wisdom for Social Media Management

No one owns any conversation. Think about how different each of the departments inside a company are, but all driven towards the same goal. The perspective of the receptionist is just as important as the perspective of the marketer or the person in human resources. Many companies like Southwest Airlines and Dell allow for multiple people to engage on social media, offering unique views on company engagement. This allows all departments to take part in the outward voice of the brand.

No company started out day one like this, but rather focused on building the company culture to accept social engagement as a way of doing business, and then focused on key individuals to train, prepare, and release into the social stream. There's still a lot of strategy behind the whole process, but that's for another post.

How do you see online engagement occurring in your company? Is it owned by one department or are the points of view from other departments considered and allowed into the conversation?