DISQUS

Bob D · 2 months ago

"Now that it’s hear"

oops

tacanderson · 2 months ago

I really need to put on each post that I crowd source my copy editing :)

mbroadhurst · 2 months ago

interesting - was asked same question earlier today and said to me it's the same as the argument about who owns the intranet. let's hope we have better success this time!

tacanderson · 2 months ago

I like that. Chris Brogan said at BlogWorld that social media was the new dial tone.

nicolei · 2 months ago

It's like you read my mind today. Sometimes the problem is too many "owners" operating on old information about the business and marketing - and not enough people who really understand Social Media.

Side note: Love the Crowded House reference. One of the best bands of all time in my opinion. :)

barryhurd · 2 months ago

I wonder though: isn't it a strange statement coming from a PR professional saying "social media should not be housed" ?

The underlying commitment to change the fundamentally broken business processes is a painfully apparent issue, but how are PR firms going to migrate the huge shift in communication trends that are at heart of the social media evolution?

Without the silos in place to control the control freaks, social media becomes very efficient at asking professionals to restructure how business is done. The issue isn't really who controls it or what silo it exists within, but convincing silo "stakeholders" that they don't exist anymore.

tacanderson · 2 months ago

First off, I'm kind of offended. I am not a PR professional :)

I may work for a company where the bulk of the business is PR work but at the very least, myself and Waggener Edstrom consider ourselves Communications. Including PR, AR, IR, HR, Digital, and tools like http://twendz.com/ (with a new Twendz Analytics in beta)

The reason I set that up is because I think 90% of business is Communications. I also think that Communications needs to be at the core of the internal and process evolution.

I agree that the silo's need to be majorly revamped and consolidated but they'll never go away completely and they shouldn't.

barryhurd · 2 months ago

LoL, I'll give it that the Studio D team at Wag Ed may not be as PR oriented as the rest of the team, but falling into the communication category we may as well just say PR firms = Communication = Social Media = Everything. :)

Isn't that the core problem? That larger firms and businesses in general are trying to discard specialty in favor changing opportunities?

I do agree that communications is at the core of business, but that seems to be driven by the most talented communicator (which may be at the top of the totem or the bottom)

I think that a real issue is that we are seeing digital adopters who are also charismatic, creative and insightful communicators that are redefining a high-value business asset and shifting themselves into new silos/categories that didn't exist five years ago.

Take all this into account, combine it with overlapping geographic and cultural issues... and you have a good recipe for a whole lot of chaos.

tacanderson · 2 months ago

For right now Communications is the best term to describe what I'm talking about but I by no means am envisioning "everything."

I think the move you mentioned to broader business categories like "social business" and Communications is driven by two factors that are not mutually exclusive: Money (firms want a bigger piece of the pie and individuals want stable careers), and Org/Process Reinvention. Because of the shifts I mentioned in this post earlier, many firms, WaggedEd included, are starting to realize that we can no longer be effective working within broken systems.

I think the first reason (Money) is the main driver for the personal shifts and most of the agency shifts you mentioned but I think that a few firms (again including WaggEd) see that we need to help our clients make the adjustments they aren't able to make while they're busy trying to run their day to day businesses. Similar examples include Altimeter and Dachis. I'm sure there are many, many others.

Don't get me wrong the money is equally motivating :)

jillanderson · 2 months ago

WOW.....what more can I say? I agree completely....Social Media should be/ needs to be integrated across all facets of the business. It's the crumbled pieces of the pie becoming whole again. P.S. I love the Crowded House photo. Perfect.

Chris Kieff · 2 months ago

This is a great post and I heartily agree. In my blog last month I wrote about how Social Media should be housed in HR http://bit.ly/m7DM5 What I was saying is the same thing you're saying here. No one department should own social media.

But I think it goes even further than that. Too many in Marketing and PR feel they can some how control it. But it's like smoking, people are going to do it if they want to and there's little you can do to stop them. Understanding that and working the issue from that direction will give you a much better approach to dealing with it.

Chris

Danny Brown · 2 months ago

Ha, great minds indeed Tac ;-)

Spot-on post and if anyone does "own/control" social media for businesses, it's the consumers that define how you act in the space.