When a new competency is embraced by a larger entity, it is the nature of a corporate organization to turn that group into a department. In fact, most PR and advertising agencies actively seek to build or acquire a social media department to meet the growing demand for conversational services (Silo image by eirikref).
Integration is the key. And I’ve said this before when I was a stand-alone social media firm.
Every marketing department, every communications function, each practice area, and all teams should have this capability. And social media needs to stop being looked at as a new profession. Instead these tools should be regarded as something that just about any worker can use in their tasks. By nature there will be some folks who are better at it than others, and they will evolve as specialists (remember the investor relations and analyst relations specialist, the copywriter in the ad agency?).
The big issue we have to address as an industry – and CRT/tanaka as a subset – is cultural. Dishing to the social media consultant an industrial revolution mentality. This reflects corporate America’s legacy, and smart companies are evolving to become information age companies. Social media, the enablement of two-way conversations, should be something that companies seek to adopt across the line as part of this larger global trend.
The above is an abridged version of a post originally published on the CRT/tanaka blog. To read the next section of the post, “Stakeholders Don’t Distinguish Between,” visit the full post.
I agree that employees across multiple departments should have social media know-how and the ability to use it for their work. It shouldn’t just be restricted to one team/department. That said, social media programs require organization and process just like any marketing or CRM activity. When you say “these tools should be regarded as something that just about any worker can use in their tasks,” do you agree that someone (department, multi-division group, etc) needs to lead the charge and provide education about social media across the various departments? This means conducting training, discussing opportunities/risks, updating the corporate communications policy to include social media engagement, and developing integrated programs across company divisions. Companies are trying to get a handle on all of this, which is why we’re seeing cross-division “social media taskforces” and specific divisions set up.
Andrew: Yes, there needs to be process and means for managing the flow of information. Otherwise you would be unleashing a chaos bomb on the company. The challenge I think lies in building organizations that can harness the information flow, create strong analysis and decision making. Unfortunately diving into the topic in full would be much more than a blog post, it would be a book. Hmmm.
Looks like we are having some connectivity issues with the blog. I received a comment from Peter Himmler, Flatiron Communications, http://www.flatironcomm.com and http://theflack.blogspot.com.
Good points. The practice of social media not only applies to all functions of a modern marketing firm, but a social media mindset must permeate all employees’ thinking as they weigh the most effective means for delivering client value.
The other day I spoke with a friend who works at an agency that successfully has positioned itself as a digitally forward-thinking firm. As such, it has reaped the benefits of new business from clients clamoring to get on the “social media” bandwagon. When I probed my friend about the kinds of services his firm offers, he admitted that it mostly entailed “a lot of blogger engagement.” Hmmm.
Missing were strategies to enhance its clients’ brands and POVs in the social graph. He made no mention of listening to the online conversation or the creation of original digital content, let alone Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, del.ico.us, reddit, SEO…
Blogger relations, while not unimportant, is a vestige of a top-down approach to building public opinion and creating action. Buyers of PR (or marketing) services must seek those who understand bottom-up and p-to-p as well.
Geoff, I share your POV. Social Media is about communication and virtually every department in a company communicates with customers, though with different depth and frequency from one to another. It even goes beyond marketing as engineering too (at least where I worked in the past) has nowadays multiple contacts with customers whether it’s to solve their hard to solve issues, get their input on design…especially true in start-up/small biz. And I believe they could do even more in that area now that social media gives them access to their market more directly.
Integrated is an interesting word to me and I like it: I understand it as the way to make possible the ongoing dialogue between all the parties inside and outside a company involved in thinking/designing/marketing a product so that it responds adequately to the market needs.
I totally agree. I once wrote a post called “I’m not a Billboard Marketer”. Social media is a tool. It’s a little different, but still a tool. The earned media meme angle is nice, because at it’s best, social media helps elevate and amplify paid media.
When things aren’t siloed.
I agree that ideally we want social media integrated into the role of every marketer. And that’s where we are headed but that’s not where we are today. I think there is value in having a social media ‘department’ or team who’s role is to consult and educate which the rest of the marketers learn these new skills. Since social media is new even for the ‘experts’ having this as a central team shortens the learning curve and the ability to identify best practices. Overtime – perhaps 2 years I see this social media team dissolving into the rest of the marketing organization.
Completely agree, however, I don’t believe the challenge is with a department or person deciding it needs to be owned by their group. The challenge is with an organizations people adopting a cohesive, easy to understand, strategy with clear guidelines. Social media for business is much different than how most (non-marketing) departments will be experienced from their personal use. Such as, public companies have a very strict responsibility on sharing as to not disclose insider information. Private companies may still have just as much responsibility to a number of investors, especially when they are employee-owned, and you can put a face to those that will lose with a wrong comment.
It’s important that guildelines be structured. When money and jobs are at stake, you need someone leading this strategy. Typically when those guidelines are released, fear of losing your job or imposing a fine upon your organization lends most non-marketing individuals to ‘opt-out’ of exposing risk upon themselves. That’s why silo’s develop. It’s not because they are told not to engage.
This level of communication is at a much higher risk than traditional means. It’s real-time; it’s raw and authentic and transparent. But if you have a solid strategy that’s easy to adopt – it can be a powerful tool that allows a relationship with customers/partners/vendors that has not existed in the past.
I fully agree with the basic premise of that you’re saying. The odd thing is that, to me, social media needs to get its voice first before it’s spread throughout an organization.
Right now I’m helping a client and his team establish a social media presence. My goal here is to essentially be his social media department and slowly have that aspect mold or fade or whatever it should be called into the organization as a whole.
Right now I see to many efforts either by entities themselves that use social media almost entirely as a push tool or so-called social media experts trying to pass themselves off as gurus because they took a class.
Social media practices are not yet developed enough, I think, to simply be integrated throughout many organizations. That’s why I think social media needs to find it’s own voice first – be it in a department or in some sort of entity that can establish itself and best practice guidelines.
Given the fact that the Cluetrain Manifesto was written a decade ago, and that many of the “observations” became the basis for social marketing practices, am I the only one that finds it very odd that we’re still debating *when* to mainstream these fundamental skills in an organization?
Is the root cause of the delay really about learning a different market engagement model, or is it more about the apparent difficulty some people have in letting go of the mass-marketing mindset from a bygone era?
It would appear that *unlearning* obsolete marcom doctrine can take more than ten years of progressive marketing therapy. Truly amazing…
@David Now that’s pretty dead on. And funny, too.
Others, the dialogue about processes and managing the evolution is something we talked about quite a bit earlier this week. I cleaned up the posts and CRT/tanaka interactive laid them out in a white paper discussing this evolution. Find the link on the bottom of ensuing post:
http://blog.crt-tanaka.com/2009/04/social-solutions-for-those-who-need-it-most/
Would love your feedback!
Geoff, you continue to amaze me and I’m honored to have worked with you as a stand alone social media agency in the infancy of social media (as we know it). I agree with you on several levels. My question to you is, as a person who cares about the notion of ’social media for social good’ how does this next iteration of social media infrastructure look in the nonprofit or forprofit cause-focused orgs? Shouldn’t we simply look to integrate tools into our cause instead of building social media engines FOR our cause? Full disclosure – I am a repurpose for social good guy rather than a lets build our own for good guy. Yet, every day there’s a new social media for social good site popping up on the landscape claiming to be better than the last one.
When I first stepped into this space, that was called “blogs” I strongly felt marketing should be the home of this new tactic. As ’social media’ evolved and blogs became part of a more complex ecosystem my beliefs began to change. I still believe there is something called “social media marketing” that is as credible as any traditional marketing strategy (research, pr,advertising, etc.). I also agree social media can support other departments from customer service (which should be part of marketing but that’s another post..) to accounting and operations, etc.
However, because of the impact that social media has on how an organization conducts business my thoughts have turned to .. there must be an umbrella SM direction. Because of the nature of SM there should/will be processes that streamline internal and external communications and cut across silos. The oxymoron is that a CSMO (chief sm officer) altho an additional level will ensure those communication lines and cross functional teams are in-place. Any one need a CSMO .. let me know ;-)
Nobody disagrees with the idea of killing silos and achieiving fully integrated communications campaigns. I have been in the communications business for about 40 years. I have heard the same argument and logic and dream for 40 years. The question is not the soundness of the desire for no silos. The question is how do you get there?
The communications business has at least two fundamental flaws that must be blown up if you want to achieve the destruction of silos. First of all, the business is based on time. But time is totally irrelevant. Clients do not care how busy an agency is — or even how unbusy. Clients care about the value they are getting for their fee. Employees are not effective or efficient by virtue of how many hours they attribute to billable time on their time sheets; they are effective and efficient by virtue of the skills and their tenacity in the pursuit of doing great work. The “success” of an agency should not be measured by and management decisions should not be based on how effectively it bills the time of its people; success should be measured and decisions made by client and employee retention and the quality and consistency of referrals. In this approach, the most important FINANCIAL measurement is the net margin percentage — the higher the margin, the more your clients are willing to pay a premium for your services. High margins come not because they are pursued but because they are the byproduct of great work. So why study time sheets?
The second basic flaw is that the business is organized and defined by virtue of distribution channel. Huh? An ad agency is an ad agency by virtue of the fact that it buys time or space on a distribution channel owmed by others. PR is about “earning” space or time on someone else’s channel. Digital = digital distribution channel. Events marketing = using an event as the channel. Etc. All of this is defined by channel. Who the hell cares? When a client knocks on the door, and they want a product launched, they don’t really care if you do it via TV or Twitter — they care whether their goals are achieved or passed with results from a campaign that is on or under budget. So why define the business by terms of distribution channel?
Isn’t it time to blow up the old model? It is totally outdated and built on fundamental flaws. But who is actually doing it? Why do people in an industry known as “creative” continue to cling to such a wrong model, especially in 2009 during an historic period of destructive creation?
If you want to know how to operate an agency without time sheets, where all clients are on a steady monthly retainer fee, that consistently achieves growth, that can have enormous client retention and employee turnover of about 10% annually (oppposed to 30% or more that is found in most agencies), I will be glad to answer your questions. The firm I co-founded in 2000 has had this radically different model from the start. Industry leaders and entreprenuers are more than welcome to contact me for details. Email is dporetz@qorvis.com — cell is 703-408-1880 — blog (where I have written about the model among lost else) is http://www.deathoftime.com. I am willing to give you all the advice you may want — for the asking. After 40 years, my contribution to my profession. Oh, by the way, we’re hiring right now, today. We have instituted no lay-offs.
In another blog where I mentioned an article of a few years ago by Washington Posr Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Steve Pearlstein about the flawed business model of the communications business, Mr. Livingston took issue with the fact that the model happens to mention our firm. That’s because Pearlstein only found one firm that used such a radical business model — he’s a pretty damn good reporter and I know very well he searched for others to cite for using a truly new model (to the degree that he says nice things about our firm, he did that only after speaking to every client we handled at the time and several we had that no longer had a relationship with us). In Mr. Livingston’s opinion, Steve Pearlstein should be “let out to pasture.” To those who think, as I do, that Pearlsetin is actually one of the best business columnists today (who did call this economic crisis well before it happened), I’d recommend his article about the business: http://tinyurl.com/ylobdq
I am totally serious about being willing to brief and answer questions from anyone who wants to hear about a model that is proven to work in every aspect.
Geoff,
This is a very well done article and one that I can support via my own experiences with individuals and companies. Social media is almost always labeled incorrectly or completely disregarded as an enterprise wide effort.
What are your thoughts on the wide spread use of old school metrics like page views, traffic, and visits as the end all be all for measuring a companies social media efforts?
There must be a better method to provide ROI metrics and cite the “empirical evidence or proof” so many companies currently want from a consultant.
Thank you again for the great article and any light you can shine on this challenge.
Dean
Sidney: My hope is that the new social media inspired nonprofit enterprise will be much more mission related than the money related. The old architecture models sales with development, accounting, etc. While those are important functions, the cause itself and the edge involved with it needs to be at the forefront.
Dean: Just wrote about measurement today separately. Pageviews in my mind is a lazy person’s metric. It’s really not a valid barometer of whether or not you are using conversational media to develop relationships…
Great post. I think there is value in having someone to work with various department to help them integrate a social media plan that is consistent throughout the company. In reality, some departments will have people adept at leveraging the power of the Social Media while others will not. I think there may be value in having a common resource to make sure the company as a whole is up to speed, and on the same page, regarding their Social Media efforts.