Social Media Advocacy: Stepping Out of Our Silo

Author: Matt

13 Aug

As a marketer and PR professional I am targeted (weekly if not daily) with a new seminar, conference or webinar on various ways I can leverage social media and the various platforms for my profession. A recent example includes a “Twitter Boot Camp for PR & Internal Communications Workshop” hosted by Ragan Communications (a very trusted source in our industry) which is actually being led by two folks I really admire – Allan Schoenberg (CME Group) and Barbara Rozgonyi. In fact, I recently led the conversation for a “Twitter 101″ webinar for PR professionals with CISION, the leading media relations software provider. Over the course of two sessions we had more than 2,000 participants!

I think its great our profession and industry are embracing social media advocacy and I can honestly say that I’ve never been on a call, webinar or attended a conference on this subject that didn’t provide at least some value. Most advice has been pretty solid for myself and I can only assume for the other marketers involved with each…but what about everyone else in business??

I’m a firm believer that as marketers and PR professionals we often operate in our comfortable “silos” (or departments). Some common examples of this are when your company receives media coverage and the marketing team might put a link to such coverage up on the website and perhaps have professional reprints made of the story for the sales team. Instead, shouldn’t the coverage be leveraged and packaged for all of your departments to effectively communicate with each of your targeted audiences? Probably…but we don’t.

I bring this up because I believe we’re missing the boat as social media advocates for business (as a whole). Instead we continue to educate within our own comfort zone, to our own people, and in ways that matter to our profession.

- What about the CEO who thinks social media is a waste of time…as he observes his teenage kids constantly communicating on Facebook?

- What about the Sales VP who doesn’t believe Twitter can generate any sales for her company?

- What about the SVP of HR and Legal Counsel who are trying to figure out how restrict their employees’ social media participation while at work?

I think you see my point. What can or should we do? I’m all ears:).

Filed under: Marketing, PR, Social Media

4 Responses for "Social Media Advocacy: Stepping Out of Our Silo"

Kasey Skala August 13th, 2009 at 9:26 am 1
Matt, this is something I’ve observed as well. It seems there is always some conference going on within the SM sphere. I wonder how much is rehash and how much is going just to say you attended “conference “.

We’re so dependent upon instant gratification. We want instant feedback and instant results. Social media only fulfills one of those desires (feedback), however, we often want the “results” first. So if we held a meeting for those who don’t understand or believe in social media, after the meeting if our goals aren’t implemented, we feel like it’s a wasted opportunity or waste of time.

Like you mentioned, we need to seed our neighbor’s yard. Our grass is already green. As social media advocates, we should understand that time and persistence pays off. We need to carry that understanding over into the education portion as well.
There’s more to a business that social media | The Electric Waffle August 14th, 2009 at 2:01 am 2
[...] But are we overreacting? Matt Batt (aka @StoryAssistant) had a post yesterday that talked about social media folks spending too much time and efforts interacting and educating others in the social…. Instead, he suggests branching out and educating those not directly involved with social media. I [...]
LuAnn Glowacz August 15th, 2009 at 3:45 am 3
Matt, I’m going through this with every client right now. Showing executives an actual snapshot of what THEIR friends and competitors are doing (not just what JetBlue and Zappos are doing) and how it’s leaving them in the dust will get you guaranteed face time, at the very least.
Are we teaching to the right class? August 18th, 2009 at 5:25 am 4
[...] In fact, I just wrote about this subject last week in my post Social Media Advocacy: Stepping Out of Our Silo. [...]