Social Media Affects Every Department Within Your Organization
by Sherry Heyl, CEO and Idealist
As more and more organizations realize the power of social media, more and more departments are trying to stake their claim in ownership of a social media strategy.
To understand which department should "own" the social media strategy, an organization must first explore which departments are affected by the evolving interconnected web.
Marketing seems to be an obvious department. Their goals include:
• Achieving top-line growth objectives
• Meeting Corporate Margin Goals
• Ensuring the company's products and services are in tune with consumer demand
• Directing new product development and ensuring the continuing appeal of existing offerings.
• Marketing communications
Not only are online communities a great way to connect with a relevant audience, it is also the best focus group ever created. It is a way to watch people in their natural habitat, amongst their peers, in their semi-private spaces (such as del.icio.us) all at a minimum cost.
The next obvious department is Public Relations. Their goals include:
• Publicity
• Reputation Management
• Establishing and maintaining cooperative relationships with representatives of the community, consumers, employees, and public interest groups.
• Promoting goodwill.
• Conferring with other managers to identify trends and key group interests and concerns or to provide advice on business decisions.
• Planning and conducting market and public opinion research to test products or determine potential for product success, communicating results to client or management.
Social media is gaining more trust and more attention than mainstream media. Anyone can now say anything about a company, and PR better know about it before it gains steam. The best way to protect an organizations reputation is to have friends in the world of social media before you need them. This means building relationships, providing relevant information to relevant communities, and monitoring conversations.
But who else in an organization should care about Social Media?
Sales is responsible for selling a product or service that solves a customers problem. Online communities can facilitate lead generation and help sales professionals to discover untapped markets by gaining insights to the problems that they are solving. By paying attention to the online marketplace, sales professionals also get to learn some inside information about the competition.
Customer service representatives respond to customer inquiries and problems by providing information or directing requests to others who can supply the necessary information or service.
When you take in to consideration that people have been burned more times by uncaring customer service reps you can understand the trend that upset customers now take their complaints to their online communities. Experienced and Professional Customer Service Professionals could respond to the conversations online regarding their product or service. This shows not only the customer, but the entire online community that is influenced by that customer, that your organization cares about the service they provide!
How about your internal training department? They are tasked with enhancing productivity, professional development, rolling out new technologies or processes, and maintaining compliance.
Social media provides the ability to follow evolving technological and cultural trends and be able to prepare for upcoming training needs, enables online community support and encourages employees to find answers and collaborate online for continuing education.
Human Resource Professionals are tasked with creating a positive and productive corporate culture, recruiting and staffing, performance management and improvement systems and organization development.
The reputation of the company affects people's interest for working there. Other way around, people's reputations are more online thus impacting the personal/professional barrier.
External conversations can represent security risks, but can also provide valuable and transparent insights to the company culture. This can help or hinder the company’s recruiting efforts.
Understanding the market more effectively can lead to more clear directions. More open cultures that let people have a voice and an ear to listen are much happier.
But what about C level executives. Should they spend time learning about these new trends on the Internet?
Social media can help a Chief Operating Officer understand the competitive landscape, market demand, and global marketplace in order to make sound operational decisions.
A Chief Financial Officer can tap into conversations occurring regarding the value of publicly traded companies and industries. Receiving real-time market knowledge of what is happening increases awareness of trends that may increase or decrease demand and/or competition.
Also, in an open global market, understanding purchasing options requires staying connected with a connected community.
A Chief Technology Officer can tap into technologies that are being developed by the community that are more effective and agile than any pre-packaged applications available. They can also find the training and support that is coming from the community that is developing such technologies.
In fact, the best talent that a CTO would want to recruit are part of those communities.
A Chief Executive Officer is tasked with implementing the strategic goals and objectives of the organization, provide direction and leadership toward the achievement of the organization's philosophy, mission, strategy, and its annual goals and objectives. This is achieved through creating culture, governance and accountability and overall transparency. A responsibility that can only be achieved with vast amount of knowledge provided by the community of employees and marketplace as well as a system in place that allows the organization to be as flexible as the markets.
With so many departments affected by social media, where can an organization begin to get their social media strategy? Well there are as many solutions as there are obstacles. Sometimes more. But I will leave you with the best advice I have heard in a long time.
In order to be seen as an organization of thought leadership in your industry, knowledge of the best practices of social media needs to be developed within the organization natively as well as put into practice.
All the organizational resources are in place, it’s only a matter of unlocking those resources.
Social media can be used to create a community driven information repository that simultaneously creates value as a resource and strategically steers the organization in the long term.
- Timothy Moenk
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