marketing management

Are you stuck in a box?

July 30th, 2008 | Author: Beth Harte

A few weeks ago Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer suggested in a post that social media is the responsibility of public relations. My visceral reaction to that notion required an immediate comment [note: I am a PR practitioner as well]. And it didn’t end there; I spent the entire weekend thinking about the post. Come the following Monday, I went back for another comment to strengthen my position on why social media is the responsibility of marketing. In doing so, I noticed that Brian Solis of PR 2.0 posted a comment: “Truth is that Social Media is the responsibility of the champions that demonstrate how it will benefit the company and the brand.” Interesting.

In the spirit of debate, I then posted this topic on Plurk to see what the smart folks there had to say. Frank Martin of Marketing Magic plurked: “this debate is so old school it misses the point of New Media, which will cut across all aspects of companies: Marketing, PR, Customer Service. We need NOT to put it in a little box of yesteryear’s definition!”

In reading Frank’s comment [and others] I realized that I was indeed stuck in a “marketing box” and looking at social media through a cracked lid.

After some consideration, I’d suggest that social media is the responsibility of the revenue generators. How so?

Customer Service/Technical Support provides support for purchased products/services
Finance/Accounting collects payment for the product/service
Sales sells the product/service
Marketing Communications/Public Relations publicizes the product/service
Operations/Manufacturing delivers/builds the product/service
Engineering/R&D designs/tests the product/service
Marketing develops the product/service
Human Resources hires the people that develop, design/test, deliver/build, publicize, sell, collect payment and support the product/service

You get the point. All departments have the ability to affect—for better or worse—a customer’s brand experience and revenue generation.Unfortunately, a lot of employees are stuck in their own departmental boxes. Understanding the brand might be foreign to some let alone adding on the concept of social media. Getting employees to embrace social media will be a daunting task if they don’t first understand that each and every interaction with prospects and customers is an opportunity to provide value by creating a positive brand experience.

Before becoming a social media champion consider becoming, if you’re not already, a brand champion first. Doing so just might create the brand pride necessary to get employees to understand, embrace and champion social media initiatives.

Initial steps might include:

explaining that the value of a brand—first & foremost―comes from the inside-out and bottom-up
embracing that the brand is a living, changing thing—it can’t be controlled
understanding that all brand experiences affect revenue—positively & negatively
respecting that a brand is owned in part by the prospect or customer

Are you stuck in a box? Do you think brand champions will help social media efforts? What other steps would you recommend?

[Photo: rustiman]