Who owns social media?

Are you experiencing firsthand the struggle to find where social media “fits” within your organization? Companies are no longer so much doubting whether social media has value to them, but they aren’t sure who should own it, or even what to do with it.

Social media has value beyond consumer PR, such as for advertising and promotion (or for recruiting, competitive research, associate relations and corporate reputation/crisis communication just to name a few) and I don’t know of an organization yet that has landed on the answer. We’re all still ironing out how to approach social media in that broader perspective.

This is admittedly difficult and the resolution is not as easy as it may seem on the surface. Ultimately, social media can be a tool that is employed by various business functions to reach their objectives. For example, a human resources recruiting function would be deficient without employing the use of social media to target audiences and promote the organization’s brand as a leading employer.

But while I’ve spent the last couple years cultivating the idea that social media is meaningful to business in a variety of ways, we’re immature in knowing what that means for how we move forward.  I can’t help but feel this is like us trying to figure out who owns the telephone. Who owns the telephone? Does HR, Marketing…Legal? Maybe I’m oversimplifying, but isn’t the answer that the phone can be a useful tool in many areas of business? Isn’t social media? Because social media didn’t just change Marketing, or PR… it has changed how we do business and how we interact with our associates and our customers. 

It certainly doesn’t make sense to designate an owner who dictates all use of social media, just like we wouldn’t do that for the telephone. Who is going to know best the needs of recruiting, or loss prevention?

I’m idealistic, and I believe in letting subject matter experts be the subject matter experts. To some extent, each business function needs to evaluate the value of social media to their initiatives and determine what commitment they place on this tool. And each should govern how they use it and how they measure its effectiveness for their purpose.

The line can get confusing in particular for Marketing vs. PR, but if you keep in context the spirit of social media and the purpose of Marketing and function of PR, you can see where to restrict promotional/marketing messaging, and where communication leads the brand’s PR.