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Who Should Manage Your Company’s Online Message & Marketing?

February 20, 2010 By Randy Schrum View Comments

When it comes to managing your companies online message and social media branding who should it be? I will share with you some of the pro’s and con’s of each category below. In the end I believe you should review this with the assumption you need a little of each profession and you may need to be more of a mediator when putting these together in a room. So the real challenge for you is to get them all to come together (play nice) and come up with something extremely powerful for your companies Social Media strategy.

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to engage, capture, and create buzz around your company
Grab our complimentary eBook:
How Your Company Can Begin to Profit Using Social Media

So lets review:

Internally:
When you consider what your companies already doing to manage its sales message and who is currently handling that it is easy to assume that this person should head up your Social Media Strategy. With Social Media for business being so new, you will want to be sure that person who heads this up is “open” to this new movement as by now you understand it is definitely not going away.

You may possibly hurt your position and strategy by keeping it with your current marketing manager as this new advertising method can be very hard to grasp. In addition the knowledge and understanding it takes to capitalize in this space has up till now come from hands of trial and error.

Social Media Firm:
In the selection process of finding a Social Media firm to handle your Social Media Strategy be sure to secure a firm who has proven successful people on the team. While case studies may be few as this market develops, they should be able to showcase personal success.

In addition, new firms are popping up everywhere. Be sure to dig into these firms experience and understanding of B2B or B2C marketing and how that plays into Social Media Strategies.

Ad Agency (not the same as a Social Media Firm):
One thing many companies are gravitating to doing is to relying on their current Ad and PR Agencies to point them in the right direction with Social Media. This could be one of the worst assumptions to be making as many PR & AD Agencies are not well versed in Social Media and tend to operate off of theory rather than proven successful strategies.

Be sure your current agencies have taken pro-active steps to stay current on the Social Media movement within hiring proven successful social media professionals.

Internet Marketer:
In your search for a strong Social Media Strategy it is very easy to come across successful Internet Marketers. While this is an additional arm that needs strong consideration to your companies strategy. You do not want to throw out your standard processes you have in place in generating leads, engaging customers with key questions, etc… These elements need to be melted together when you do consult with an internet marketer.

I think there is a place for all of the above, I will say again the key is to getting them all to play nice together to bring your company to the front of the Social Media movement.

***Grab This Complimentary eBook to specifically see how to begin***
to engage, capture, and create buzz around your company
Grab our complimentary eBook:
How Your Company Can Begin to Profit Using Social Media

 

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Filed Under: B2B Social Media, Education, Media, Sales, Social Media, Social Media 101 Tagged With: , , ,

About Randy Schrum
Randy Schrum is the Executive Vice President of Sales for DemingHill, a Leading Corporate Social Media Consulting & Marketing Firm. DemingHill is a consortium of the top leaders in each of the core disciplines of Social Media for Corporate Business. Inclusive of Sales, Lead Generation, BD, Marketing, PM, Customer Service and more. Mr. Schrum is also Founder of RandySchrum.com & MyCorporateMedia.com, which features Randy’s Sales & Business thoughts along with special blog contributors. Many Business Executives, Owners, and Entrepreneurs have come to enjoy Randy’s practical thoughts & business insights. Additionally, Mr. Schrum is considered one of the leading authorities on LinkedIn & Twitter as co-manager of the #1 LinkedIn & Twitter Strategies group’s. He is the author of Twitter Strategies, which teaches businesses and Twitter users how to build on their business and professional goals using twitter.

  • "You do not want to throw out your standard processes you have in place in generating leads, engaging customers with key questions, etc… These elements need to be melted together..."

    I think this is a key point. Consumers are becoming very savvy, looking for all types of research on a product or service. They want both the Internet 'buzz' or social media as well as traditional internal marketing material. Also, it is critical to use analytics to determine what is important to consumers (i.e., videos, Twitter, brochureware, etc.) and give them more of what they want. This will vary based on market and geographic location of course (so geoIP, time and market based campaigns are necessary).

    Aggregated the Internet (social media) and traditional internal marketing material, as you pointed out, will engage, increase interaction and generate sales.

    Chris Glennon
  • Olivier Riviere
    Hi Randy,

    Good and pragmatic advice, short and spot on!

    You are very wise when you state that there is a place for all (type of specialists). In fact, the role of a modern marketing manager or CMO is to smartly orchestrate all marketing messages and activities, ensuring consistency and collaboration between different areas of specialty as well with other functions (development, pre-sales, sales, customer service..).

    The raise of social media is a factor that increases the need for this holistic and collaborative approach. Now, in most organizations of a significant size, making it happen is not trivial.

    Olivier
  • ' Who Should Manage Your Company’s Online Message & Marketing? '
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  • Randy Schrum
    David,

    I suspect even now that some agencies are catching on to the curve and are hiring those experience in Social Media. Their struggle now for those who have figured it out and truly finding those who know what their doing...This will continue to take time and right now those who are most experienced, not necessarily educated will be the ones who will continue to lead this movement.

    Randy
  • I agree with you about the use of an agency for social media, even though it seems like relying on an existing agency is the default position for companies. I think that's a huge mistake. These are advertising agencies, after all -- not social media agencies.

    Even though most ad agencies tend to know the theory, as you said, they're not necessarily the right choice to handle Web content. And I'm a firm believer that social media success is really about content -- whether that's a blog, or a podcast, or a Facebook page, or give-and-take with customers on Twitter. Agencies have their strengths, but social media content is usually not it.
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