Over the past few weeks, a number of people have posted about where social marketing "fits" in the organizational structure of a company, what sort of outside service agency is best positioned to help companies with their social media marketing efforts and how do we define expertise in this new field. Among them, and apologies if I leave anyone off: Todd Defren, Dave Fleet, Susan Getgood (that’s me), Josh Hallet, Kami Huyse, Geoff Livingston, and Jeremy Pepper.
Is PR the rightful functional "owner" of social media? Or should it be marketing or advertising that gets the ball? Perhaps social media marketing is just a subset of word-of-mouth marketing? With everybody and his brother now hanging out their shingles as blogging experts and social media gurus, how does a company determine who has the expertise and experience to help it navigate these waters?
My opinion:
The functional lines between our marketing disciplines of PR, direct marketing and advertising are blurring. Social media marketing requires a blending of marketing and PR/communications skills. BTW, this line is blurring everywhere but it is more readily and immediately apparent in the social media world than offline. But it is offline too. Remember that online social networks are reflections of the interests and affiliations we have "in real life." Computer networks simply speed up the effect.
The other line that is blurring beyond recognition is the line between seller and buyer, journalist and audience. Now more than ever, we have multiple roles, sometimes almost simultaneously. A mommy blogger is a customer of a consumer products company, but at the same time, she might be a mompreneur with her own small or medium sized business. Journalists are bloggers; bloggers are journalists. Again, a reflection of similar real-world shifts, amplified by the Internet. We all gets lots of spam.
Whether social media marketing is a new marketing discipline, or simply a tectonic shift in Marketing with a capital M, I do not know. What I do know is that in order for it to thrive, for companies to be able to detect the real experts from the sham, for individuals to develop their skills to meet the new imperatives, we need to understand that it is a discipline. Not a project. Not an extension of PR or advertising or web marketing. Not something you can learn in a week from reading Naked Conversations and Boing-Boing.
You need a solid grounding in marketing and public relations. The social media component isn’t separable from the marketing plan. Everything still needs to track back to the plan, the objectives, the business goals. It isn’t enough to know HOW to do something. You need to know WHY. Real experience in the field helps. Extensive coursework or an undergraduate degree in psychology or sociology is very useful. Some philosophy too. A soupcon of "renaissance person" such as a second language and familiarity with great literature doesn’t hurt.
Most of all, we need credibility for this new discipline. Provided in part surely by our ongoing practice. The good examples. But that alone isn’t enough.
We need the supporting academic research. That is what gives any discipline its "legs." Without it, social media marketing is tactics. Campaigns. Maybe strategies. But not a legitimate discipline or profession in the long term.
Which is why I encourage you to support the Society for New Communications Research, and specifically the upcoming Annual Gala and Research Symposium to be held in Boston December 5th and 6th.
As practitioners, we need the information and insights from the research that will be presented at the Symposium, and that is reason enough to attend. More importantly, we need to support research organizations like SNCR because they provide part of the academic base. Can’t attend, but wish you could? Send someone in your stead — a junior colleague, a friend. No one to send? Make a supplemental donation to SNCR in support of the Symposium.
It can’t happen without you.
Tags: SNCR, Society for New Communications Research, social media marketing, marketing, PR
Is PR the rightful functional “owner” of social media?
I don’t read the Marketing Roadmaps blog often, but thank you to Susan Getgood for the inspiration (and I promise I’ll become a regular now). Susan has a post on her blog today entitled The Discipline of Social Media Marketing,
Great piece! The best training I had for social media occurred at through Dale Carnegie. It was sales class on relationship building. How do you like them apples? And doesn’t that make sense, “How to Win Friends and Influence People?”
The second most important training was my Master’s degree at Georgetown’s Communications, Culture and Technology program. There we studied how Internet technology was impacting the way we as a culture go about our day-to-day lives.
PR and Marketing skills help, but without basic common sense approaches to relationships, and a bigger understanding of sociology — as you say here — they ultimately fall short in this realm.
Another awesome post Susan.
Your perceptions are deep and well thought through.
I wrote a piece recently about the blending of direct with other disciplines and how that actually waters down the true potential of the direct marketing strategy.
We tend to do and recommend what we know best. And both PR, research and direct each requires a lifetime of learning to plan correctly.
Marketing, like the medical field, requires specialization to apply properly. I’m not sure most people have the capacity to blend these skills. Much less master them.
Yet, we must learn how to blend them because our customers are becoming more adept in their use of blended communications strategies.
Perhaps there is a new type of marketer emerging from these changes. I call such a person a “marketing integraters.” They know how to tap into the talent of the specialists and achieve marketing objectives with great skill.
Frankly, I have yet to meet such a person. But that is what is needed.
Kudos Susan and thanks. What a pithy primer for this former WSJ reporter,now author/speaker on partnering, swimming upstream to understand the best use of social media to harness the power of us in this flattening world.
Susan, this post reminds me of the New Media designation within IT and how the online space has evolved even on its home territory, so to speak. Social media marketing, like New Media, is a bit of a free for all. It seems that it can’t easily be classified as belonging to any one group, but will be up for grabs among those who learn the most about it (and then really start to drive it).
Thanks for all the comments. I agree 100% Julie, that social media can’t be easily classified as belonging to one group, but unfortunately there is a bit of a turf war going on at the moment between the advertising/guerilla marketing and PR contingents. Which is totally counter-productive. And totally understandable.
As you point out, it’s not unlike the battle for the Website that occurred between IT and marketing in the 90s. The companies that generally succeeded were the ones that realized that the Website was part of the company’s public face, not IT infrastructure, and put the responsibility with a marketing group.
I hope we learned from that. Social media marketing is the evolution of Marketing. It doesn’t belong “in” PR or “in” advertising. It deserves its own seat at the table, with practitioners who understand the imperatives.