Taking the social media high road

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post titled Who owns social media? exploring where I think responsibility for social media management should lie within the marcomms mix. For those who took the time to read it, you will know I strongly believe it should sit within a digital specific division of a PR company.

There is a secondary consideration which all agencies need to take into account, whether digital specific, marketing wide or PR – the DIY amateurs that believe they own the company social media profile. You may have come across the internal die hards who do not want to relinquish what they have build themselves. It’s tempting to be condescending but by not getting them on board, you could be missing a trick.

Rather than competing with the vigilante for control, they could become an alie nestled within the organisation. Building these kind of allegiances with like-minded individuals on the client side can be the key to keeping the business.

Their initial toe dips in to the pool of social media can also serve as a testing pot when you’re developing your more holistic social media campaign.

Operate in the spirit of collaboration and you will be rewarded – it will at least make your life a lot easier.

Who owns social media? Are you in the ring?

2010 has already become the year for social media. While 2009 was spent learning and testing, it’s only in the past month I’ve noticed clients dedicating bigger budgets to the social web.

Social networks have become slicker and more marketing savvy. Facilities such as Twitter’s new local trends have allowed us to be more sophisticated in targeting messages to the right audiences and mobile technology has given rise to a new generation of location based social networks such as Foursquare.

As the budgets increase alongside the opportunities, the fight for ownership of the social media realm has got serious.

A new specialist agency is born every day, in house teams who have been experimenting in an unstructured way are starting to form strategies, ad teams believe they own everything and even customer services wants in on the act.

While I believe there is a place for social media across an organisation, there must be someone leading the herd for strategies to be implemented coherently.

Not surprisingly, for me the responsibility has to lie with the PR team.

We’re experienced in knitting together different strands of the marketing mix to create holistic strategies. And social media is about communicating messages effectively through conversations – that’s what we do.

The question is, will we win the fight? Read an issue of PR Week from 2009 and you will see social media discussed at arms length as a new and scary entity. This year, the gloves are off and PR Week is now running a blog called Firehose specifically dedicated to discussing issues within digital media.

PR agencies small and large are honing their social media offerings – some, such as Cow PR‘s Rabbit, have created specific digital offshoots.

We may be performing well in round one but there’s still a long way to go before the bell rings.

Only results will reveal the true victors.