I’m a little late to this party, forgive me.

A great, insightful post for sure but… is it me or isn’t it somewhat sad or a sad indictment that such a post is even necessary? I mean shouldn’t it be obvious that social media should be integrated into the grand plan?

I don’t know… maybe it IS me…
.-= steve olenski´s last blog ..Nonprofits and Social Media =-.

Social media has been around for while in Internet years, but its best and highest use in the P.R. and marketing realms has yet to be determined.

Social media is a great tool for targeting, interacting and engaging audiences. Marketers definitely need to be listening to these soundboards for important conversations and be on the cusp of any and all emerging technologies.

-Chelsea Langevin

I think one of your latter questions struck me the most – “Is it that we’ve been siloed for so long and that there hasn’t been a good job with integration to begin with? Email marketing, direct marketing et al. suggest the answer is yes.”

Taking a step back and looking at workplace self-preservation habits for a moment, could it be that the silo effect (which began, to your point, way before the rise of Social Media Marketers) is a natural result of marketing practitioners using concentration areas to create an air exclusivity and specialization? Think about it – when companies have reductions in force, marketing is the first to get chopped. But if you’re the ONE GUY who knows how to finesse the email database, or how to set up and track Facebook advertising, then that mystique might preserve you for awhile. Assuming you also know how to write the strategy project that’ll get dumped on you as a result of so-and-so getting canned…

I think, too, that sometimes the endless pontification and philosophic waxing many people in the social media space do is enough to forge the Us v. Them mentality that can create anxiety and animosity with some classicly trained marketers. That kind of fear doesn’t exactly encourage an atmosphere of integration and collaboration, does it?

Man, I hope this made the kind of sense in writing that it did in my head!
.-= Heather Rast´s last blog ..Change the Conversation =-.