It occurs to me that many organizations are still not clear on social media and marketing. It’s disappointing because what could be achieved by functioning as a finely-tuned internal combustion engine, is instead misfiring, knocking and pinging their way to the destination. I’m talking about when social media remains this “thing” where it is used primarily just for advertising and less on listening. For many businesses, the speed of the social media team does not necessarily revolve as fast as the marketing engine.
Social media needs to be not just “in” the marketing group, but its key players need to leverage their resources for great interactions, meaningful outcomes and deeper conversations. What happens many times in growing companies, is that social media lends itself to be successful on its own without involvement from others. This moment is a defining moment for social media in many businesses.
I believe it’s critical to define a vision and a set of strategic goals for a social media program. These goals and strategies should support the interests of the company and the marketing group. Without it, it continues in ‘default’ mode of growing the audience. The game is not how to be great at Twitter or Facebook, but how you can great at business with Twitter and Facebook.
For those who want social media to gain more credibility in their company, you need to deliver cross-functional results across the organization. This includes, sales, customer service, business development, executives and all other facets of Marketing. Basically, you want to develop a love for social media across all the activities of the business. Otherwise, it will remain a function–or rather, a mere tactic, used in Marketing.
Simply, social media should be tightly involved in the marketing group and not orphaned into its own island of resources.
