Corporate Communications

Who owns social media within your organization?  Marcom? Corp Comm? C-Suite? Legal? HR? IT?

Based on my experience working with Fortune 500 companies and smaller non-profits, this is a question and challenge that everyone is thinking and talking about.  Who owns social media?  The answer is everyone.  Which is why social media is such a challenge. It crosses all existing borders and boundaries within an organization.  Social media has great impact within all of these groups and each one of these groups needs to play a part to have an effective proactive and reactive social media strategy.

This is why I have spent years working with Corporate Communications teams to develop a digital and social media strategy that allows their company to be flexible and react in a timely manner when appropriate.  This might sound impossible to some especially in larger organizations that tend to not move at light speeds.  But I can tell you if the proper foundation is created, Corporate Communication teams can be empowered to own their company’s social media strategy and online reputation.  Let me explain how we get there.

The process that I have found to deliver organizations large and small the greatest success includes the following:

  1. Identify SWAT team – Social media crosses a number of groups within an organization.  Those groups and people need to be identified early and brought into the fold.  Create a SWAT team who will work as a collective moving forward.
  2. Training – This SWAT team will have all different levels of understanding about the internet and social media.  It is imperative that everyone understands the basics.  I will work with your team to develop a personalized and FUN training programs to ensure everyone has a base level of understanding needed to move forward.
  3. Process – Based on how your organization is structured and your corporate culture, I will work with you to create a process and corporate governance that will effectively work within your organization.
  4. Social Media Fire Drill – I have developed a personalized and secure internal fire drill that will test to see if your organization is prepared for when a social media issue (emergency) arises.
  5. Learn and iterate – Based on our fire drill findings and analysis, we determine what are the necessary next steps to ensure your organization is ready to tackle social media in the digital age.