You Can’t Own Social Media

Ok.  This is a tired dis­cus­sion, I admit.

But yes­ter­day, I came across an arti­cle by Shel Holtz which stated, “PR trumps mar­ket­ing when it comes to con­trol­ling the social media bud­get and strat­egy.”  The state­ment orig­i­nated from new find­ings released by the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Pub­lic Rela­tions Gen­er­ally Accepted Prac­tices (GAP) Study, a study released every other year by the Strate­gic and Pub­lic Rela­tions Cen­ter at the USC Annen­berg School for Com­mu­ni­ca­tion & Journalism.

Read Shel’s post for the full break­down (or bet­ter yet, read the full study), but boiled down, orga­ni­za­tions are mostly turn­ing over strate­gic con­trol and over­sight of social media ini­tia­tives to tra­di­tional PR depart­ments and agencies.

This tends to hap­pen for two major reasons:

1. The close align­ment of many social media objec­tives with those of PR.
2. PR pro­fes­sion­als are gen­er­ally more skilled at mea­sur­ing social objectives.

I’ve said for awhile now that I thought pub­lic rela­tions was the nat­ural home for social media ser­vices, at least in the agency world.  Many of the goals of a social cam­paign do align with ser­vices already offered by PR firms.

I do think that pub­lic rela­tions agen­cies have the edge when it comes to mea­sure­ment.  Social media mea­sure­ment, with­out the right tools at hand, can wind up a messy slush of edu­cated guesses and incorrect data.

But I believe that no sin­gle mar­ket­ing prac­tice can truly own social media, and that we’d be doing the field a dis­ser­vice if we allowed pub­lic rela­tions (or adver­tis­ing) firms to take over the bulk of social responsibilities.

In the three years that I’ve been engaged in the social media com­mu­nity, I’ve learned that social media is a very nuanced tool that can be used to solve or improve many dif­fer­ent types of busi­ness prob­lems.  You can use it for lead gen, rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment, direct sales, SEO, cus­tomer ser­vice, prod­uct research, and more.

This is why social media requires agen­cies and depart­ments that look at social media from more than just the pub­lic rela­tions angle.  Social media is not a pure form of mar­ket­ing, it’s a hybrid approach that blends together the best of many dif­fer­ent mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties and that can be applied in many cre­ative ways.

This is why I sus­pect that as the social sphere evolves, we’ll see migra­tion from social as a PR tool and begin to see more ded­i­cated social agen­cies like Pow­ered and New Mar­ket­ing Labs, or, ded­i­cated dig­i­tal teams of large full-​​service agen­cies like Fleishman-​​Hillard and Edel­man Dig­i­tal.

How do you see social media fit­ting into the agency spec­trum in the future?  Is it des­tined to become another ser­vice offer­ing for pub­lic rela­tions agen­cies, or should it be left to more ded­i­cated entities?

Photo Credit

Related posts:

1. Social Media Chal­lenge Digest V.7
2. 5 Rea­sons Why I Love Social Media
3. Social Media Chal­lenge Digest V.5