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Based on experience from several meetings with both medium and large companies in Denmark, one thing is striking: most organizations are yet to figure out where to place responsibility for social media.
The touch points for a large organization when it comes to social media are many:
• The marketing department taps into it when using a social media channel in their marketing mix.
• HR when they write up a company policy on social media for employees.
• CSR teams in the organizations when using social media to create awareness of part of the company’s CSR strategy.
• The customer support team when helping with and answering questions from customers.
• The sales team when using Facebook and LinkedIn for social CRM.
• Communication of course has a bunch of different reasons to tap into social media. From the internal use of tools to help socializing the organization and increase knowledge sharing to external use related to PR, PA or corporate communication in general.
At the moment it seems that most corporations put social media under corporate communication, which is probably where the best fit is right now.
The challenge, however, is the many other touch points in the organization. It not only functions as a coordinating role, like when PR needs to coordinate in order to back up a new marketing initiative, but often makes the most value when the social media team has a strategic advisory role or often handling the execution of the social media part, which means approval and removal from the department where the project originated.
Where to start and what to do
Now I believe that social media tools are here to stay, it’s not a fad, it’s not something that goes away tomorrow. The evolution of the media has just begun and the touch points in the organizations are only going to increase in the future.
There is no easy way around it, most medium and large companies must start with setting up a project team that operates with a strategic approach when deciding where to place the responsibility for social media in the organization.
I think it will differ from company to company where it should be placed to add most value and for some large organizations, it might not even be placed under one of the above-mentioned areas, but end up having its own place higher in the hierarchy.
Maybe the social media team should function more as an internal advisory team, maybe they should also handle the development and execution – it all depends on the company and the organization.
» Follow Jonas Klit Nielsen on Twitter
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