Which department should own social media?

Great article.

I was going to write a blog post about this, as it's a tricky subject...

On the one hand, Twitter is about the individual - it can be argued that the ideal situation would be if one person were responsible for an account at all times. But obviously with annual leave and sick days, that's just not possible for a corporate account.

Even then, with a group approach, it can be difficult to decide who gets overall ownership. I worked at a large company a while back who gave their social media to the PR Team, followed by the Content Team. We had a Digital Marketing Team, who were not asked to be involved at all. I found this to be a foolish approach, as we knew how best to take advantage of the channels, whether it's a greater understanding of what time of day to post a Facebook update, or how to write the perfect tweet with appropriate hashtags.

I think the best bet in that example would've been to grant "ownership" to members of the Digital Marketing Team, but ask PR to provide the voice/tone; Content to provide the content; Customer Services to help out with any customer problems, etc. In other words 1-2 individuals who hit the 'Tweet Now' button, with assistance and involvement from others, each specialists in their own respective area.

It really can't be one or the other. All departments should have a hand in a social media marketing strategy. Different audience members have different needs. If the message is only coming from marketing or customer service, it's likely that some good information is being missed out on.

It really is a mix of the two, each dept has different needs and wants from there clients and products. This is something that if cracked can really help any business.

Hm, not sure what's so tricky about the subject. In social media Marketing is like walking into a party dressed in a sandwich board and a megaphone announcing the latest car deals.
Honestly when you're at home checking out Facebook updates and seeing what your family and friends say, then suddenly have some useless post from BMW on your wall, do you really stop and look?
Marketing should use social media as an ad platform and release a few fun viral videos while PR and customer services should use it as a tool to interact with customers. The point is what is social media? it's word-of-mouth on steroids.
The sandwich board man at the party, isn't going to get much positive word of mouth. I wrote an article about this with Phil Butler some weeks back going over exactly this point.

If it is possible it should be a separate area colaborating with all the organization. If the structure is small, subject to the profile of available resources, Marketing might be the best option, as generally they know better how customer thinks and feels and what is the impact on business of any interaction

The real opportunity for companies is to look at how their whole structure is designed. Silos and departments are the barriers to successful business. Using Yammer internally to access the combined power of the community internally, and then empowering all of the staff to contribute to the social media plan and implementation is itself a powerful management opportunity. It won't happen. Yet. But people need to realise that everyone wins with more business in the company,and so the sale or retention of a customer should be a team effort. We are still at the early adopter phase of social media, but if you take a disruptive view of how things are done, the potential for leadership is immense

I would argue that it primarily depends on the type of business, your customer and how you position the brand.

Unless you are heavily resourced it can make little sense to open yourself up to dealing with complaints constantly and whilst social media is a community it is not essentially a forum on the flip side of that people very quickly turn off when all they see is a marketing tool. I would argue that social media should be directed from marketing with exposure and input from customer services. Customer services input is important as I can say from experience that marketers can expose their business when they try to do customer service.

I don't think any one department can own social media, it is becoming a vital communication tool and as such works across a variety of functions. Organisations should have standards / guidelines in place for social media but should forget about who should own things just because it may be more convenient for them.

some great comments above. I wouldn't say its the wrong question as within a business there has to be a responsibility and reporting line in which case someone is the business 'owner'.

When it comes down to who contributes this differs in many businesses and to many different effects. Key for me is a good content strategy in which no matter who is interacting within the social space, they follow a guide to how the brand should be perceived online. This helps with voice/tone/style and messaging.

I think the silo'd business argument is a good one , integration and cross department understanding is key to a business message being constant in all media. Customer experience shouldn't differ by channel or communication method.

'Who owns social media?' isn't the first question. 'What is the objective of our company using social media?' surely has to be the starting point.

Goals might be improved customer response times, keeping customers informed of a complaint's progress, measuring sentiment, answering questions, improving conversion. It may even be leads generation. But they're likely to be slightly different for every company.

Having defined goals (and how they can be measured), there needs to be an evaluation of how implementation is likely to fit with/impact brand messages, existing work and processes, internal skills, structure and resources (budget and staff).

The processes put in place (and the 'ownership') have to make those outcomes most likely to be achieved. That may well lead to some challenging conversations across silos/departments. It will almost certainly mean setting in place guidelines, controls and lines of responsibility/authority.

Difficult though those conversations may be, however, they're likely to be less painful than the ones when your social media disaster goes viral because you failed to have them.

Agree with Roger. Customer service and marketing are part of the user experience. It's a problem if they are disconnected.

In my company marketing owns social media but we've come up against walls when we've tried to get people involved from technical staff in our social media efforts. Are followers would really rather talk to our technical staff than marketing people but the technical people would rather be doing their work than social media :-).

I like what Dell has done by providing in house social media training across the organization. Ideally in our company I'd like to have a social media evangelist in key departments like our technical division.

I think marketing can develop strategy, best practices, policies and training that can be shared with other departments.

In my opinion - Every department should own social - it should run through your organisation. It terms of control and/or co-ordination it should be managed by marketing

Kotler said: "marketing isn't a function, it's your entire business from your customers' point of view."

I'm not sure that helps.

Hire someone who has PR/Comms/Marketing/Digital experience and is highly geared to solutions and is consumer focused to lead the Social Media team and working very closely with group of key functional and business unit stakeholders.

Thought provoking post and some terrific points being made in the comments. Marketing has traditionally owned social media within most organizations. If that was the perfect model we most likely would not be having the discussion we are having. Marketers to their credit are doing a better job of moving from using social media as a platform for content marketing to more engagement. But as conversations increase and questions become more complex and at times service oriented there is a realization in my opinion that by simply placing social media strategy and execution within a single department (marketing) is to stop short and to shortchange what social media can really do for a brand. I think we need to move past marketing and customer service operating in separate silos. I have heard marketers talking about customer service is the new marketing and although that may be true not all marketers are equipped to work within the customer service space anymore than customer service professionals can easily work within the marketing space. Strategy needs to be defined jointly by Marketing and Customer Service and engagement efforts need to be handled by the appropriate areas of an organization (i.e. PR related issues should be handled by PR and Service related issues handled by Customer Service). But all groups need to work from the same playbook to ensure consistent brand messaging and voice. Hopefully Social Media can act as a catalyst to push departments closer together and not to pull them further apart.