Yours, Mine or Ours? The Ongoing Debate Over Who Should Manage a Company’s Social Media

 

Yours, Mine or Ours?

The Ongoing Debate Over Who Should Manage a Company’s Social Media

I know this will make me unpopular with some of my advertising friends and partners, but it’s based on my hands-on experience of at least the last year and a half:

Let me preface this by saying that in a perfect world, a company would manage their own social media, making it more authentic, but it’s not a perfect world and that’s what creates jobs.

Thus:

While there are exceptions to this rule, a PR agency is the best resource for handling social media for clients: not the advertising agency; not the website development team, technicians and designers; not internal people who don’t have the time/knowledge to devote to it.

To quantify, let’s keep this to a discussion to ongoing retainer clients and tools including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Here’s why:

  • It’s our job to know what’s going on with our clients at all times. We know what new products you’re introducing, what events you’re throwing, what your president is doing next week 
  • We know what you do and how you do it – we have to – that’s what makes us good PR people. We know the ins and outs of your business: what makes it unique, challenging, competitive, interesting, new, difficult, exciting – on an ongoing basis, not just when we’re developing a new branding campaign or web design
  • We are talking to you on a regular basis vs. other creative vendors who are handling projects or only in touch on a semi-regular basis
  • We are regularly reading what other key media and industry experts are saying about your industry on and off line; this gives us additional insight and content to post that will educate, inspire and start those two-way conversations with your target audiences
  • We think editorially, not commercially – therefore we can execute an engaging strategy for effective social media – without being too promotional. We believe in a 70/30 social media philosophy: 70% of content is informational, engaging, entertaining; 30% is promotional and all about you.