Integrating the Social Media function into your organization.

1. Deepak Pershad’s Blog
How is the Social Media function integrated into your organization?
In my last blog, I closed with two observations that speak to the need to integrate Social Media
management into existing marketing or PR/Corporate communications departments in
organizations, i.e.:
 The active designing and management of the brand in social media also implies structural
and operational changes in how brand communications are managed in major companies.
 Social media drives a closer meshing of different marketing communications disciplines –
Brand and Social Media Strategists become lenses to focus cross-disciplinary brand
conversations.
One point of view is that Social Media is simply another marketing channel that can be
incorporated into the marketing mix, supported by a specialized Social Media Manager role. At
the other end of the spectrum is the view that Social Media is all-pervasive, and needs to be
incorporated in every major marketing discipline, and in corporate communications.
The answer may lie somewhere in between.
The reality is that Social Media management interfaces in a very real and operational way with
all the major disciplines, e.g. with brand management, direct marketing, eMarketing,
eCommerce, advertising, employee communications, and public relations, to name but a few.
While social media management may find a different functional “home” depending on the
company – e.g. it may be a part of public relations in some companies, and marketing in others,
it is, along with brand management, a hub discipline that can serve as a customer dialogue
conduit for the others.
In effect, many major marketing and PR touchpoints need to be assessed in terms of their
brand and social media implications. To quote Brian Solis (1), “As social media chases ubiquity,
we learn that influence isn’t relegated to one department or function within an organization.
Any department affected by external activity will eventually socialize.”
Of course, social media and brand management serve more that just a gatekeeping function for
the other disciplines – they are disciplines in their own right, with strategy, planning, execution
and tracking activities.
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2. So, how is the Social Media management function integrated into your organization? For
example, is it:
 Part of Corporate Communications
 Part of Marketing (or Digital/eMarketing)
 Part of Brand Management (which may also be a part of Marketing)
 Stands on its own as a separate function reporting directly to the CMO (probably
unlikely)
I would really be interested in hearing your feedback.
References: (1) Brian Solis, http://mashable.com/2010/01/11/social-media-integration/
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