Who Should Be Responsible for a Brand’s Social Media Outreach?

Posted by Jason on May 22, 2008 in Social Media · View Comments

As social media continues to be a larger and more important part of a company’s marketing strategy, one thing that is a challenge for big brands is how to decide who is responsible for this stuff? Is it the PR department or agency’s job to blog, reach out to other bloggers, manage the company’s online reputation, participate in the dialogue, etc? Or is it someone else’s job?

Please Take A Peck at this survey and let me know what you think.

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Jason
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  • Johnster

    Everyone in an organization has a shared responsibility for a brand.

  • Dave

    Jason:
    In response to the first comment on the external poll site, 2012 before PR can handle social media? We have two execs in our PR department who I would dare to say border on being social media “experts.” Are a majority of PR organizations that far behind the curve?

  • Jason

    Thanks for your comments. I would say that most people in traditional company PR departments aren’t up to speed with social media, in my experience. For an advertising or media agency, I would hope that the PR department would have some knowledge of social media, but I’m not sure if they’re equipped to handle this stuff the same way someone who only focuses on social media can. Social media outreach and monitoring is a full-time job (if done correctly), in my opinion.

    That said, I don’t think PR organizations are nearly as far behind as other companies and brands.

  • http://budesigns.com ben

    The PR department should probably be “responsible”, but anyone and everyone should be able to take part.

  • Seth

    Would it be best to let PR departments or upper management set the standards and objectives and have others execute them like sales or customer service?

    If the goal is to engage the user/customer it seems that this model would be a better way to interact with them without coming off as a corporate hard sell.

    It is easy to micromanage social media and make it come off looking like plain old advertising. The brands credibility is ultimately at stake.

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