Recommended reports
State of Social Report 2011
Econsultancy's State of Social Report, produced in partnership with LBi and bigmouthmedia, is the most comprehensive study of its kind around the strategies, tactics and websites companies are using to harness social media for marketing, sales, customer service and other business objectives. The research, based on a survey of more than 1,000 companies, benchmarks budgets, resourcing, measurement and barriers to success ... plus much more.
JUMP - Lead presentations 2011
Presentations from the lead stream of Econsultancy's JUMP, online and offline marketing all joined up, event on 12th October 2011. This track is about the big issues in making joined up marketing a reality: organisational structure, skills and culture, measurement and budgeting.
Graduate intern Public Relations at Oliver Schrott Kommunikation
14 March 2010 14:01pm
hi all - I'm interested in your opinions on where social media should fall in the organizational structure: PR or Marketing? Any intersting thoughts are welcome.
Head of Ecommerce at Lovehoney
14 March 2010 14:03pm
Personaly, I think it should sit within Customer Service :-)
President at The Customer Respect Group
15 March 2010 19:30pm
When reviewing social media comments regarding most companies and products, they are rarely phrased in terms that customer service can work with. Very often they are best described as venting. It is important for companies to intercept vents as these can be picked up and spread virally and that is a huge potential problem. If however they are real customer service issues, these need to be deal with. I think there should be a customer service group that do nothing but support and another group in a broad PR/marketing team that will work on brand concerns. Both teams are needed, the question is which team drives the process.
Graduate intern Public Relations at Oliver Schrott Kommunikation
16 March 2010 17:45pm
Thanks for sharing your ideas guys!
Managing Director at indiumonline
17 March 2010 17:50pm
That's a big question! I think it's down the organisation and how it's structured as to where it should sit. But critically PR and Marketing should be very closely linked in today's social media environment - otherwise you're heading for trouble.
If they are very closely linked (together with Customer service) then it doesn't necessarily matter where it sits...
Online PR/Social Media Consultant at Econsultancy
17 March 2010 21:47pm
Interesting question and one that many organisations are currently grappling with.
For now Marketing and Comms teams are driving social media strategies and running brand and comms campaigns. Many are facing issues when those efforts are more about broadcast brand messages and are not customer-centric. The Eurostar social media issue was an example of this - tweeting about breaks to Belgium and unable to effectively deal with calls for help whilst stranded passengers were trying to get vital information about their train/safety.
Most orgs serious about what social media means for their business do not believe that it can be driven from any one department and realise that customers do not see internal dept. structures when they want or need to have a conversation with a org/brand.
Many are evolving cross-dpartmental approaches to social media where Customer Srvice, R&D, Comms and Marketing and others play a role.
Partner and Executive Producer at Digital Pulp
18 March 2010 14:55pm
It all depends on the type of organization...
If your a online store or consumer products company, it makes sense that the social channels could be used for customer service. We've seen twitter used well in this way.
If your a B2B company, the social channels might be better served by the marketing team who can use them to generate buzz or stay connected with current partners and clients.
If you're a foundation or non-profit, your primary goal might be to stay in touch with the media. For those organizations that are slow moving and don't fundraise a blog may prove better than facebook, twitter or foursquare. But if you're a fundraising organzation, the reverse would be true.
We all wish there were some best practices or one-size fits all approaches but as always it comes down to goals and your organizations digital strategy.
Consultant at Possible Worldwide
19 March 2010 05:44am
For the Social Media and PR, it must be upon your objective. You must have clear objective before you plan the strategy. There are some case study like Dell, they have separated the Twitter accounts for each objective. This will allow to measure the effectiveness and will not confused by target audience. People now looking for information that they are expecting to get it , they don't like full stream of information that not segmented.