1. For corporate social media case studies and best practice,
head to www.usefulsocialmedia.com
Internal Structure: How social media expertise
is organised within business
Introduction The first task for any company intending to use social media is to assign and organise
human resources in the right way. There are many questions to be asked:
1 Should you hire in expertise from outside the company, or recruit internally?
2 How many people should you have working on social media for it to be effective?
3 Is it better for staff to work on social media exclusively, or can it be one of a variety of
priorities for them?
4 Should you create a distinct ‘social media team’, separate from other departments?
5 Or is social expertise better placed within a pre-existing department, like marketing?
6 Alternatively, is it better to avoid planning for a ‘social media team’ at all – and
instead assign social media responsibilities to a variety of individuals throughout your
company?
The charts below set out the opinions of our respondents on each of these issues. We
feel that a consensus has been reached on some, whilst the divergence of opinions on
others is striking.
The first six charts deal with the amount of people a company assigns to work on social
media – both exclusively and as part of a broader role. The final chart looks at the seniority
of social media practitioners within a business.
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