Social Media Should Not be Housed. No One Owns it.

Biz

Social Media Should Not be Housed. No One Owns it.

By Tac Anderson ⋅ October 20, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Filed Under Business, Cyberspace, Marketing, Public relations, Social media, Technical support

: Image via Wikipedia

Social Media Should Not be Housed. No One Owns it.

I get this question a lot lately. Who owns social media? Or my personal favorite; Where should social media be housed?

The answer is no one. No one owns it. There should not be a Social Media Department. Social media is hard for people to understand because it defies our normal categorizations.

Is it a technology? Yes and no.

Is it a philosophy a methodology or a strategy? Yes, yes and no.

Is it Marketing, PR or Customer Support? It is no one activity but should be a part of all.

Is it communication or collaboration? Yes.

It’s hard for people to work with somthing they don’t understand. History has even shown us that it’s dangerous to do so. But categorizing something is not the same as understanding. It’s a short cut people use to avoid thinking and learning.

Categorizations are dangerous because Â they inhibit us from doing things differently. How we use something is based on the categories we assign it to. If we say social media belongs in the marketing category then we apply the same methodologies to it as we do all other marketing. We start applying broken metrics like impressions and CPM to it. If we say it’s customer support then we instantly add it to an area that’s a cost center (that’s dangerous). If we say it’s a technology we hand the reigns over to IT (again dangerous).

I believe the reason we can’t effectively categorize social media is because it isn’t one thing. We are trying to wrap up a dozen or so technological advances with as many sociatel and business changes and call it one thing.

Even if the technologies behind social media hadn’t come along we would still be experiencing dramatic business changes (not as dramatic but still significant). Our business processes are broken and have been for a while. The culture devide between businesses and their customers has been getting worse for quite a while. Things needed to change. Social media amplified that need and accelerated that change.

Now that it’s hear and the denial is gone and people realize that it isn’t going away we need to next adress the underlying prroblems. Social media is the solution not Â the problem. While everyone is figuring out how to categorize, optimize operationalize social media the real problems are still there. The underlying processes are still broken. If you’re using social media as a tactic and not as a way to solve the underlying business problems, you’re doing yourself and your comapany the biggest disservice.

I get this question a lot lately. Who owns social media? Or my personal favorite; Where should social media be housed?

The answer is no one. No one owns it. There should not be a Social Media Department. Social media is hard for people to understand because it defies our normal categorizations.

Is it a technology? Yes and no.
Is it a philosophy a methodology or a strategy? Yes, yes and no.
Is it Marketing, PR or Customer Support? It is no one activity but should be a part of all.
Is it communication or collaboration? Yes.

It’s hard for people to work with something they don’t understand. History has even shown us that it’s dangerous to do so. But categorizing something is not the same as understanding. It’s a short cut people use to avoid thinking and learning.

I believe the reason we can’t effectively categorize social media is because it isn’t one thing. We are trying to wrap up a dozen or so technological advances with as many societal and business changes and call it social media.

Even if the technologies behind social media hadn’t come along we would still be experiencing dramatic business changes (not as dramatic but still significant). Our business processes are broken and have been for a while. The culture divide between businesses and their customers has been getting worse for quite a while. Things needed to change. Social media amplified that need and accelerated that change.

Now that it’s here and the denial is gone and people realize that it isn’t going away we need to next adress the underlying prroblems. Social media is the solution not Â the problem. While everyone is figuring out how to categorize, optimize operationalize social media the real problems are still there. The underlying processes are still broken. If you’re using social media as a tactic and not as a way to solve the underlying business problems, you’re doing yourself and your comapany the biggest disservice.

You are Crazy not to Measure the ROI of Social Media! (newcommbiz.com)
What Does the Future of Marketing Organizations Look Like? (newcommbiz.com)
Stop Trying to Change. It’s Pointless. (newcommbiz.com)
Twitter is the Internets Water Cooler (newcommbiz.com)
Get Weird People (newcommbiz.com)

Share This Post

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Scridb filter

About Tac

Social media anthropologist. Communications strategist. Business model junkie. Chief blogger here at New Comm Biz.

Visit Tac Anderson's Website | Follow Tac Anderson on Twitter

Bob D

“Now that itâ€™s hear”

oops
http://twitter.com/mbroadhurst mbroadhurst

interesting - was asked same question earlier today and said to me it's the same as the argument about who owns the intranet. let's hope we have better success this time!
http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

I really need to put on each post that I crowd source my copy editing
nicolei

It's like you read my mind today. Sometimes the problem is too many “owners” operating on old information about the business and marketing - and not enough people who really understand Social Media.

Side note: Love the Crowded House reference. One of the best bands of all time in my opinion.
http://123socialmedia.com barryhurd

I wonder though: isn't it a strange statement coming from a PR professional saying “social media should not be housed” ?

The underlying commitment to change the fundamentally broken business processes is a painfully apparent issue, but how are PR firms going to migrate the huge shift in communication trends that are at heart of the social media evolution?

Without the silos in place to control the control freaks, social media becomes very efficient at asking professionals to restructure how business is done. The issue isn't really who controls it or what silo it exists within, but convincing silo “stakeholders” that they don't exist anymore.
http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

First off, I'm kind of offended. I am not a PR professional

I may work for a company where the bulk of the business is PR work but at the very least, myself and Waggener Edstrom consider ourselves Communications. Including PR, AR, IR, HR, Digital, and tools like http://twendz.com/ (with a new Twendz Analytics in beta)

The reason I set that up is because I think 90% of business is Communications. I also think that Communications needs to be at the core of the internal and process evolution.

I agree that the silo's need to be majorly revamped and consolidated but they'll never go away completely and they shouldn't.
http://123socialmedia.com barryhurd

LoL, I'll give it that the Studio D team at Wag Ed may not be as PR oriented as the rest of the team, but falling into the communication category we may as well just say PR firms = Communication = Social Media = Everything.

Isn't that the core problem? That larger firms and businesses in general are trying to discard specialty in favor changing opportunities?

I do agree that communications is at the core of business, but that seems to be driven by the most talented communicator (which may be at the top of the totem or the bottom)

I think that a real issue is that we are seeing digital adopters who are also charismatic, creative and insightful communicators that are redefining a high-value business asset and shifting themselves into new silos/categories that didn't exist five years ago.

Take all this into account, combine it with overlapping geographic and cultural issues… and you have a good recipe for a whole lot of chaos.
http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

For right now Communications is the best term to describe what I'm talking about but I by no means am envisioning “everything.”

I think the move you mentioned to broader business categories like “social business” and Communications is driven by two factors that are not mutually exclusive: Money (firms want a bigger piece of the pie and individuals want stable careers), and Org/Process Reinvention. Because of the shifts I mentioned in this post earlier, many firms, WaggedEd included, are starting to realize that we can no longer be effective working within broken systems.

I think the first reason (Money) is the main driver for the personal shifts and most of the agency shifts you mentioned but I think that a few firms (again including WaggEd) see that we need to help our clients make the adjustments they aren't able to make while they're busy trying to run their day to day businesses. Similar examples include Altimeter and Dachis. I'm sure there are many, many others.

Don't get me wrong the money is equally motivating
jillanderson

WOW…..what more can I say? I agree completely….Social Media should be/ needs to be integrated across all facets of the business. It's the crumbled pieces of the pie becoming whole again. P.S. I love the Crowded House photo. Perfect.
http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

I like that. Chris Brogan said at BlogWorld that social media was the new dial tone.
http://twitter.com/ckieff Chris Kieff

This is a great post and I heartily agree. In my blog last month I wrote about how Social Media should be housed in HR http://bit.ly/m7DM5 What I was saying is the same thing you're saying here. No one department should own social media.

But I think it goes even further than that. Too many in Marketing and PR feel they can some how control it. But it's like smoking, people are going to do it if they want to and there's little you can do to stop them. Understanding that and working the issue from that direction will give you a much better approach to dealing with it.

Chris
http://dannybrown.me Danny Brown

Ha, great minds indeed Tac

Spot-on post and if anyone does “own/control” social media for businesses, it's the consumers that define how you act in the space.
http://exorbite.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/links-for-2009-10-23/ links for 2009-10-23 « Ex Orbite

[...] New Comm Biz Â» Social Media Should Not be Housed. No One Owns it. (tags: socialmedia enterprise20 ownership howto organization) [...]
http://www.newcommbiz.com/the-future-of-hr-and-social-media-facebook-connect/ New Comm Biz » The Future of HR and Social Media: Facebook Connect?

[...] Social Media Should Not be Housed. No One Owns it. (newcommbiz.com) [...]
http://www.newcommbiz.com/top-5-predictions-for-the-next-5-years-in-business-social-media/ Top 5 Predictions for the Next 5 Years in Business Social Media

[...] Social Media Should Not be Housed. No One Owns it. (newcommbiz.com) [...]
http://www.newcommbiz.com/pepsi-drops-the-super-bowl-for-social-media/ Pepsi Drops the Super Bowl for Social Media

[...] is sad to me because I don’t think anyone owns social media. Each discipline brings it’s own unique perspectives and strengths to social [...]
http://www.newcommbiz.com/being-trustworthy-isnt-about-feeling-good-its-smart-business/ Being Trustworthy Isn’t About Feeling Good, It’s Smart Business

[...] Social Media Should Not be Housed. No One Owns it. (newcommbiz.com) [...]
http://www.newcommbiz.com/what-does-your-job-title-say-about-you-mine-says-ill-be-out-of-work-soon/ What does your job title say about you? Mine says I’ll be out of work soon. | @NewCommBiz

[...] key factor: Social media shouldn’t live in silo’s. I’ve said it before but, no one owns social media. I do not agree with some that social media should have it’s own department. In fact I think [...]

website translatorsite translatorautomatic translationfree translationoil paintings

Search

Biz