How is your social media outreach organized within your company?
Just wanted to get an understanding of org structure for social media employees. Are you based primarily in customer support organization, pr, product groups, marketing? Let me know. Of course it depends on how you use social media whether to be pro-active on customer support for existing customers (ala comcastcares on twitter) or engaging in potential new leads.
Good Answers (2)
LaSandra B
Sr Manager, Digital & Event Marketing at Cisco Systems
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (2), Web Development (1)
My team falls under service provider marketing. We are responsible for putting together and executing the overall team social media plan and how to roll in specific launches or key marketing inititiatives.
There are also social media teams in corporate communications (ie. PR) and corporate marketing which we work closely with. The PR folks focus on blogs - they manage the overall corporate policy and they also include key bloggers in their media outreach. This outreach is integrated into a single marketing plan which may include other areas of social media including Facebook, Twitter, application or widget marketing, etc.
The corporate marketing team operates like a mini agency within the corporation offering services like conversation monitoring and events in Second Life.
Links:
It really depends on how social media (SM) fit into a company's communication strategy. Within our company we look at how SM can help boost customer service, innovate new products/services, or enhance the flow of information internally and externally.
I work for a B2B company where it's hard to bring the social aspect to the business world. Since we don't do any PR media outreach through blogs, and our main focus is utilize mobile social messaging, (SMS, qik, and Twitter) SM group falls under Marketing Communication.
More Answers (4)
The team I work in is a product group within the organization. Our products encompass original web development, tools for our constituents to use (local TV stations and independent content producers), as well as strategy and consulting across the company.
We also work very closely with the public relations (communications) group. Unfortunately, customer support has not yet been 'roped' in to the social media sphere - although we do direct customer communications via Facebook and Twitter bypassing the customer support group.
I think it's a good idea to keep "structure" as limited as possible. The whole concept of social media really doesn't fit well with traditional organizational structures of pr, marketing, sales, service, and other verticals. A social media representative should be able to answer my question or fix my problem, not divert me to another business group. When you're in a discussion within the social media realm, you should have freedom to touch on and respond to every aspect of the business you represent. Otherwise, the social media consumer (who is expecting instant gratification online) may get frustrated with institutional red tape.
In short - give your social media people a LOT of freedom. Don't hold them back with organizational structures.
Angeline V
Manager, Community at Citysearch.com, Music Photographer
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (1), Blogging (1), Enterprise Software (1)
Given our social media strategy, I would say my position as Community Manager of crowdSPRING (a community-based design site) falls mostly on the marketing side, as my primary focus is reaching out to new customers + finding new opportunities to raise awareness of our organization, but it also deals with customer relations, as I must maintain established relationships and address customer issues and concerns, be it in our forums or on Facebook or Twitter.
Storm W
Sr. Marketing/Creative Director for marketing, advertising, social media, web 2.0, & SaaS in the San Francisco Bay Area
We use a multitude of technologies to communicate and explore avenues for our clients. We have an office in Second Life and we use 2.0 social media to communicate with remote teams and telecommuting workers.
