Posted 07.11.2024 by Josh Krakauer
Today, in strategic marketing aspects that get taken for granted: Social media ownership.
As social media keeps approaching center stage in most marketing strategies, everything surrounding it comes under scrutiny.
That brings up this question: “Who should own social media?”
Note: When speaking of social media ownership, we refer to the department responsible for social media accounts and channels, and by extension, for developing and executing the plan to run them. If you’re looking for majority shareholders in social media companies (you know, like Zuck or Elon), this article is not about them.
For many years, social media team ownership gravitated to marketing and communications departments, and this is still the norm.
However, ownership of social channels is not something that “just happens”, but a decision that affects the culture and priorities of the company.
Let’s look at the options, and the factors to consider.
Commonly, social media fits into these departments.
Defining social media ownership is a decision conditioned by important factors, including:
Let’s start with the role of company goals in social media ownership.
The brand marketing team takes the lead when the primary goal is to build brand awareness. Their experience with content creation, running far-reaching campaigns, and connecting social media with key themes for the brand is vital.
In these cases, the social media team plans around strategic narratives and aligns with long-term goals for awareness and perceptions in their category.
When lead generation and attributed revenue are the main goals the social media team supports, don’t be surprised to see departments like revenue marketing, business development, or demand generation own social media.
This structure is more common when a business, especially in B2B SaaS, is in its startup or growth stage.
Their knowledge of the sales funnel and drive to convert will be key to converting passive audiences into new customers.
Next comes the type of business in question, which can also define who owns social media.
For example, in mature, enterprise-scale businesses — especially those operating in a challenging industry where crisis management, brand consistency, and appropriate answers are paramount — social media ownership is more likely a function of comms or PR.
Needless to say, this is case-sensitive, so there’s no go-to formula to recur to here.
Team structures have to be considered as well.
Consider the difference between centralized and decentralized team models.
In a centralized social media team, control of brand accounts and content strategy is given to a single team.
Centralized control of social media is preferred to maintain branding and messaging. This team has complete ownership of all social media content created and distributed on behalf of the brand.
Want to set up a new account for an event, department, or product? Not so fast. That goes through them first.
Other companies adopt a decentralized approach and let different departments manage social media accounts autonomously.
It’s usually the case of organizations where:
There’s also a mixed approach where a centralized communications team takes care of the parent or global brand, and dedicated marketers or teams manage each business unit or sub-brand with direction from the central team.
For instance, imagine a real estate company with individual branch offices in different states.
Another example of this approach can be observed in collegiate social media. Take the University of Texas’ social media structure as a snapshot.
While the university has its brand accounts that communicate to a large audience of students, parents, alumni, and faculty, they direct people to individual accounts for program-specific information.
These channels are operated by the departments but have to follow brand guidelines at the University level.
Finally, social media maturity comes into play.
Companies with low levels of social media maturity tend to assign social media management to the generalist marketing team (which often is a one-person team at that stage).
However, this is usually challenged at one point or another.
As the marketing team grows and manages more resources, it becomes natural to have social media branch out of shared ownership into a place of its own.
Since there are no universal laws to social media ownership, asking who can own it is more relevant than asking who should.
Based on the elements that define social media ownership (psst, listed above), the main candidates are easy to spot:
On top of these, there are two more, although less common potential scenarios for social media ownership.
The first one is observed in companies that have achieved global scale.
In such cases, social media ownership can be assigned to a Global Communications or Global Marketing department.
The second scenario happens when social media ownership is assigned to the winner of a power struggle. Strategy and goals come in second place here, and it’s not the ideal scenario to work with (but it still happens).
If you search the web for this answer, the overwhelming one you’ll find is “of course!”.
Speaking as the CEO of a social media marketing agency, I believe that the best answer is not that straightforward.
Outsourcing social media support is recommended, with an in-house position leading the important ownership functions like policy, budgeting, and internal communications.
In this context, an agency can bring its expertise to scale social media professionally while having the internal support and financial backing to achieve so.
Outsourcing social media ownership fully can be a disastrous move for larger companies with nuanced needs and established audiences, and also for companies operating on very tight budgets.
A department can have many names. So, to answer the original question of who should own social media at your company, a little recap:
Ultimately, the best department to own social media depends on your company’s needs and goals. And if agency support is what you’re after, you can always contact us.