Today's unresolved debate – where does social media sit? My my isn’t that the equivalent of a box of matches in a bomb factory! As a full service digital agency this is something we have been grappling with internally ... are social media campaigns creative-led, PR-led or an SEO strategy. Do you really need a social media “expert” or should all digital disciplines not have a basic understanding of this concept, albeit through the lens of their own expertise? The problem with this question is that trying to answer it simply generates more questions... quite frankly it makes my head hurt.
In his recent Ad Week post Joseph Jaffe asks:
“Exactly where and when did the digital space earn the stripes and credentials to tackle the high roads of authenticity, transparency or peer-to-peer collaboration (just to name a few of conversational marketing's core tenets)?”
Whilst Fallon’s marketing concept of “branded generosity” and our own approach to “building believable brands” may have only recently been explicitly declared, these approaches have been incubating over many years evolving in line with the consumer’s growing reluctance to accept advertising.
The fact is that successful PR and digital media have more in common than we might initially believe. Successful media campaigns depend on creative executions which engage the consumer, resonate with the consumer’s perception of the brand and reach the right audience in the right mindset.
Equally for PRs good consumer media relations rely on: an appreciation of the zeitgeist; listening to the publisher and understanding what the audience they are writing for wants to talk about then working collaboratively to deliver engaging news.
The mistake that people like Jaffe make in questioning “how ‘relations’ between corporations and journalists equate with real people hanging out with other real people” is that he is really referring to one type of PR – corporate PR. Conversely, consumer PR has always focused on talking to “real people”- the holy grail of a consumer PR campaign being to hear people talking (favourably) about your campaign in the pub and corporate PRs and consumer PRs have been at loggerheads for years over how daring they can be with a brand.
So, if we think about social media in terms of brands connecting directly with the consumer, traditional PR skills certainly apply – social media just removes the middle man.
Yet whilst PRs may understand how to talk to an audience and how to create news that engages this audience, only a limited portion of PROs have had sufficient digital / technical experience to have a thorough appreciation of how to exploit the full potential in any digital environment.
This is where the SEO specialists come in. These are the guys that understand inner workings of the web and how social media can most effectively be used to drive traffic to a website and whilst much of the value of a social media campaign would be lost if you fail to heed the wisdom of your SEO team, their skills have not traditionally focused on the social sphere.
Yet social media is not just about conversations within a digital space, we need to also consider the vehicle that brings people together. As consumers become increasingly accustomed to social media engagements, their expectations of how brands present themselves in the social media space are rising too and social media success can be highly dependent on the innovation and imagination of the creative team behind the concept.
We believe that the answer to “who owns social media” is found in its very essence: co-collaboration. Social media success requires multiple (often incompatible) skills which are rarely found in a single individual or department. So apart from taking two nurofen what am I going to do – continue lobbing a clients problem into a locked room with creatives, prs, techies, seo peeps, planners and a very brave client services person and come up with social media strategies that are considered from every angle!
Revolution Magazine
