In an industry where brand standards are of the utmost importance and entire marketing functions are dedicated to ensuring brand integration and consistency, a great irony has emerged.  Social Media—nobody owns it, but everybody’s doing it.  Think about it.  You spend countless hours and dollars on getting multiple internal constituencies and external partners to speak from the same voice, but in one ten second tweet, Joe from Accounting just announced that he (and by association your company) is still “hangin’” from one too many cocktails the night before.

So, the question, “Who owns social media?” has become very real, very quickly.  And in addition to policing errant employee tweeters and putting a social media protocol in place, companies are now acknowledging that social media is just as important as traditional channels when it comes to gaining competitive advantage and connecting with customers.

So who is the social media “owner”? I’ve found if you can answer this question in any way other than “it depends” you’re missing the boat.  For some it’s MarCom, could be PR or even sit in Advertising.  It could fall under customer service and for yet another group of companies, it might mean outsourcing, or conversely, you may have a dedicated internal team that focuses 100% on social media. I’d love to hear from those who are managing Social Media, how you are tackling it and where it fits into your business.