TheWayoftheWeb

There has been a lot of debate recently about the need for companies and organisations to employ social media managers and specialists in a dedicated role – the main criticism appears to be that the role isn’t needed because employees already use social media.

That might be the case in a limited number of small organisations, but someone will end up as an unofficial social media expert. And as someone who performed the role for a large organisation, I know there are a number of good reasons for having one person as the focal point – even if every employee is actively representing the group or company.

1. Justification: Are employees going to use social media effectively when they have senior managers questioning whether it’s worthwhile?

2. Guidelines: Most people have a reasonable amount of common sense, but if you haven’t got clear guidelines for employees to refer to if needed, you’ve got no excuse when they get things wrong. And all it can take is one personal attack for even the most responsible employee to make a mistake. That’s assuming they even keep up to date with the latest legalities of using social media in addition to their day job.

3. Analysis: Do you know what’s working? And is a social network referring the most traffic because of scale, or because other social networks are being ignored or done badly?

4. Co-ordination: Do you trust independant employees to know where exclusive news should be revealed first? Or could a status message or tweet destroy your carefully planned campaign? Is the right content going online at the right time, to coincide with the right development work?

5. Research and Development: Is Facebook more relevant to your company than Bebo? Will you reach the right people on Twitter? And should you be improving the forum on your site, or developing a widget for social networks? The answers are different for every organisation, and indeed, every campaign

6. Coordinating external resources: Do you know enough to decide between a good and bad external agency when it comes to social media? And in a large company, are you sure other departments aren’t hiring other agencies at the same time?

7. Crisis management: When something does go wrong, you need a plan in place, and someone who can manage an effective response.

Whether or not social media is a specialist role, or part of a wider remit, there needs to be someone with the authority and accountability to ensure that the work feeds into the wider business effectively, with an effect on product development, customer service, SEO, and business strategy.

A chance conversation with @farhan about social networking and social media reminded me of something I’d been considering for a while, but hadn’t got round to posting.

Which is the fact that ’social networking’ has always existed in a very formal sense – in the networking that took place on the golf course, or amongst graduates of certain university colleges or public schools (In the UK, a ‘public’ school is, in fact a private school). You’d network with people wearing the right tie and blazer, and you’d either be born into, or pay your way into that network. A rare few tended to work their way into it by some good fortune.

And I’m not for a moment going to suggest that the ‘old school tie’ networks have been replaced by Facebook or Twitter. Or that there aren’t cliques already formed by social media ‘experts’, marketing people or tech geeks.

But the barrier to entry has become a lot lower. By investing time and effort into researching the right topics, adding value, or tieing together individuals, it’s entirely possible to become the lynchpin or a significant member of an online community – and whilst it’s not always a measure of skill or knowledge, the barrier is your natural skill in interacting via your keyboard or mobile, rather than anything else – unless you’ve reached a certain stage of internet celebrity, your looks, elocution, or ease in the presence of others won’t be tested, and your online social footprint will go some way to preparing, mitigating or even celebrating your possible shortcomings.

Which can only be a good thing – although the question is whether the new networking will evolve to better recognise the people truly providing value, and those who talk (blog) a good game. And how well those truly working at what they do are able to invest the additional time in marketing themselves in the age of the *ahem* personal brand.

In case Amazon needs some help shifting a few more Kindles, I’ve done the kind thing and provided them with the content you can read here for free. And it’s available for a small fee after a 14 day trial.

Treat your Kindle to TheWayoftheWeb.

In all seriousness, I’m intrigued to see whether there’s a paying marketing for content available for free online, to see whether the Kindle obeys the law of mobile that content and services seem to generate money on those platforms more readily than via the web.

Plus I wanted to see how easy it was to sign up, given that Techcrunch has already experienced someone unofficially publishing their blog feed alongside their own.

And if it contributes a couple of bucks towards keeping my hosting going, then it’s a bonus!

Some interesting links for the weekend:

London’s best free wi-fi hotspots – Timeout: The type of guide I kept meaning to find/write, and suddenly it appears!

Email is such a blunt tool – Neil Perkin: Neil not only writes consistently great posts but always seems to find the perfect images to illustrate them, along with brilliant visual presentations.

Social Media is good for you – Faster Future: Nice post from Dave Cushman as a counterpoint to the shock headline-grabbing about how Facebook/Twitter etc are replacing the other scourges of humanity – the radio, record player, television, video nasties, video games etc. See also my earlier post responding to the social networking health threat…

Gordon Brown is apparently going to protect ‘high quality’ content on the internet – Cnet: For ‘high quality’, assume he means traditional media – and for how he’s going to protect it – he has no idea, or at least he isn’t telling anyone…

Swedish ISP won’t retain user data – Ars Technica: ‘Jon Karlung, the head of ISP Bahnhof, says that his company won’t turn over any user data to authorities because it refuses to keep any log files. That decision is legal—for now’. This is why I love the Swedes so much!