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Brand or Agency:
Who Should
Own Social?
Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social? 2
CONTENTS
3		 Why Ownership Matters
4		 What Tasks Do Marketers Outsource?
5		 How Much Time Does Social Media Monitoring Take?
5		 How Much Does Outsourcing Cost?
6		 How Your Business Type Affects the Decision
7		 Are There Legal Issues Involved in Outsourcing?
7		 Brands as Social Managers—The Case For and Against
9		 Social Media Management—A New and Rapidly Evolving Business Function
Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social? 3
“If you want a job done well, do it yourself.”
Fine advice, but does it apply to managing your presence in social media? Finding a way to get that
critical job done well has become a high priority for brands and organizations of all sizes, but social
managers are often unsure how to make it happen. That’s understandable: social is complex and
evolving rapidly, and what’s right for one organization with a certain set of objectives and use cases
isn’t right for another.
Where do you start? As a social decision-maker at a brand, one key choice you need to make is
whether to outsource social or not. And if you do decide to outsource, which use cases and tasks
will you assign to the agency and which will you manage in house?
Just to be clear: We’re not recommending one choice over another—compelling arguments can be
made for both brands and agencies on many use cases. The goal of this paper is rather to give you a
better understanding of the factors you should consider to help you make the right choice that will
boost your brand’s success in social.
Why Ownership Matters
As long as someone’s managing your online presence, does it really matter whether you or your
agency is in charge? It does. Key aspects of social media management are all affected by who’s
doing it, including brand image, cost, quality and use of insights, lead generation, ownership of data,
consistency and effectiveness of messaging, engagement policies and more.
Just as with other outsourcing decisions, each organization considering that option has to determine
what it’s trying to achieve and what are the most effective and cost-efficient ways to get there. You’ll
have to weigh your unique mix of needs for online marketing, community management, customer
service, product innovation ideas, crisis management and more to find the right fit for you.
Note that “brand or agency” isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition: Many organizations outsource
certain social media tasks, like design and development for a Facebook page, while keeping others
in house, like managing their Facebook community. There’s no accepted best practice that says
the brand or the agency has to own all aspects of social; in fact, for many brands and agencies,
collaborating on social is efficient and cost-effective and turns out to be the best way to leverage the
strengths of both organizations.
“The companies that have the most effective social media communications are those that
have a combination of internal and external people doing social media.”
— Eve Mayer, CEO, Social Media Delivered, author of The Social Media Business Equation
Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social? 4
What Tasks Do Marketers Outsource?
What will an outsourced social media agency do for you? Here’s a description from one company’s
website1
: “We take care of all the work, we optimize your messages, we monitor the reactions, and we
reach out and respond directly with your customers on your behalf. It is a mistake to hire a company
to be the social connection between your brand and your customers. But you can outsource most of
the actual work—leaving you free to focus on the real value.”
Apparently, that sounds like a good deal to more and more companies. The overall trend shows a
steady increase in the number of firms outsourcing social. In 2010, only 14 percent of marketers
outsourced social media marketing. In 2011, that number doubled to 28 percent. And in 2012, the
percentage rose yet again, with 32 percent of marketers outsourcing social media.2
So more marketers in particular are partnering with agencies to handle social—but exactly what tasks
are they outsourcing?
20%
D
esign/D
evelopm
ent
A
nalytics
Content C
reation
M
onitoring
Research
Strategy
Status
U
pdates
Com
m
unity
M
anagem
ent
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
11%
Social Media Tasks Marketers Outsource to Third Parties
10%
7% 7%
6% 6%
4%
The chart shows that tasks requiring more technical expertise are the most likely to be outsourced,
while ones requiring the most in-depth knowledge of the brand and direct engagement with
customers are likely to stay in house.
1
http://www.socialcontraptions.com
2
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32208/Social-Media-Outsourcing-Increases-128-in-Two-Years-New-Report.aspx
Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social? 5
How Much Time Does Social Media Monitoring Take?
One of the main reasons outsourcing is appealing is that companies have discovered how time-
consuming it is to simply monitor the social web. In fact, studies show it takes a midsize company
about 32 hours a month to capably handle a single social media platform.3
That means real-time,
constant monitoring. Doing the job well also demands a nuanced understanding of the customer and
the brand, as well as knowledge of what events may be impacting the brand everywhere around the
world, on every social platform where the brand lives.
A recent post on the TechRepublic site 4
regarding the pros and cons of outsourcing social media cites
Social Media Examiner’s recent survey results on time required for social. The survey reports that 36
percent of marketers are devoting one to five hours a week to their social efforts, and another 26
percent are spending six to 10 hours a week.
Knowing those time estimates is useful in helping you make the in-house vs. outsourcing decision,
but doesn’t necessarily tip the balance one way or the other. Some businesses want to do social
monitoring but don’t have the staff hours available and don’t want to hire. For them, an agency makes
sense. Mid-size or larger organizations may have staff available, or are willing to hire social specialists,
and believe the function is so important to the brand that they want to keep it in house.
How Much Does Outsourcing Cost?
Recent research by The Content Factory5
found these cost ranges for outsourcing tasks to a
professional social media marketing agency:
•	 Launching a new Twitter account, complete with setup and outsourcing content creation/
consumer interaction (140 characters at a time), costs an average of $2,000–$4,000 per
month. The total price range was $1,000–$7,500 per month.
•	 Restructuring an existing Twitter account with “limited coaching” to achieve client goals
costs between $1,000–$2,500 per month.
•	 To set up a new Facebook account and provide limited ongoing training to business partners,
online PR agencies charge an average of $2,500–$5,000 per month, with some going as high
as $9,000. This also includes status updates and interacting with customers.
•	 Creating a “comprehensive” strategy for social media marketing and outsourcing all work for
all channels (with a minimum of two) costs anywhere from $3,000–$20,000 per month, with
the industry average settling between $4,000–$7,000 per month. Starting the accounts from
scratch and consulting on a 4- to 12-month contract, you’ll pay between $3,000–$15,000 per month.
3
http://www.forbes.com/sites/capitalonespark/2013/03/19/should-you-outsource-social-media-or-do-it-yourself/
4
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-decision-maker/pros-and-cons-of-outsourcing-social-media/
5
http://www.contentfac.com/how-much-does-social-media-marketing-cost/
Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social? 6
“Social media is still very new, and it’s still evolving, so it can be advantageous to have
people on your team whose primary focus is social media. The good ones will be constantly
learning and studying the field, and will have insights that are timely and comprehensive.”
— Duane Craig in Tech Decision Maker
How Your Business Type Affects the Decision
Andreas Pouros, COO at Greenlight, points out that another factor in addition to time and cost is your
type of business. Different types of businesses are better served by different in-house or outsourcing
arrangements. One way to classify businesses is by the size and importance of your brand to your
business. Think of your business as one of three types: a brand-driven business, an acquisition-driven
business or a growth business brand.6
To figure out which you are, you can look at your paid search budget allocation and identify what
proportion is spent on brand terms versus your other terms.
In a brand-driven business, more than 80 percent of your paid search spend is allocated to your
brand terms. For these businesses, the brand is their most significant asset by far, and the price and
range of their goods and services are less important than brand equity. Examples are Coca-Cola, Walt
Disney and Apple.
If that describes your business, then your brand is the core reason people buy from you, so
maintaining brand value is critical. That means keeping social in house—close to PR and customer
support and the people who know the organization and brand the best— makes a lot of sense.
An acquisition-driven business is the opposite of a brand-driven business. Only 10 percent or less of
your paid search spend is allocated to your brand terms. If you’re this kind of business, what you sell or
offer is far more popular than your brand. Examples are clothing retailers selling unbranded clothing,
travel sites that do little or no offline advertising, and brands in the early stages of development.
If turning off your non-brand pay-per-click (PPC) activities would result in significantly decreased
revenue, you’re probably in this category.
For these businesses, outsourcing social to a firm that specializes in such online marketing tactics as
SEO, PPC, display and affiliate marketing makes sense. These “search agencies” can optimize your
results based on responding rapidly to what people are saying and reading about you online.
If you’re a growth business brand, your branded pay-per-click spend percentage falls somewhere
between the first two types of business. Businesses like yours typically have recognizable brands, but
exist in highly competitive sectors, so you need to promote your products in response to consumer
needs and not just maintain brand mind share.
6
http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/6883-who-should-own-your-social-media-monitoring
Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social? 7
For your business then, the decision is mostly about how important online is to you compared to
offline. If online is crucial, you should probably keep the social function in house. If offline is more
important, a full-service agency that handles a range of marketing activities, including social, can do
an effective job of global brand management.
Are There Legal Issues Involved in Outsourcing?
According to Ashley Hurst, Partner in the Commercial Litigation team at Olswang LLP 7
, you need to
balance the clear benefits of outsourcing, such as gaining access to specialist knowledge, against
the risks of outsourcing a function that has the ability to go very wrong very fast. Keep in mind that
marketing is just one aspect of your social presence; once you’re out there, you’re engaged in a
dialogue with the entire online community, and some decisions about how and when to respond you
may not want to leave to your agency.
For example, if you’re considering outsourcing, you need to figure out who decides when to respond
to a defamatory response to a blog post. What should be the response time? Who needs to approve
new Twitter streams? Who’s monitoring the Facebook page outside of office hours? What is “on
brand” and what’s “off brand”? How tolerant of criticism should your company and executives be? Has
the agency received sufficient legal training?
“Once a problem is spotted,” writes Hurst, “either by the company or its agencies, the company then
needs to decide how to react. Empowering an agency to respond to social media comments may
facilitate quick response but also runs the risk of being premature or off-message. It can therefore be
helpful to think in advance of different levels of risk and devise procedures for dealing with each level.
For example, a company may opt for a traffic light system whereby a green issue can be dealt with by
the social media team, amber issues need to be escalated to the legal team, and red issues go straight
to senior management. A pre-determined crisis team of specialists can also help save valuable time.”
Brands as Social Managers—The Case For and Against
At the level of specific use cases, like community management or category analysis, convincing
arguments can be made for brand or agency as the right choice. At the highest level, though, there are
overarching arguments for or against outsourcing. Here are some key ones.
The Case For Brands
•	 You can own and analyze the social data. If you outsource, and your agency goes out of
business or you decide to change agencies, wouldn’t it be advantageous to own the social data
about your brand, products and campaigns? Even putting that scenario aside, owning the data
so you can analyze it anytime you want, any way you want, is clearly valuable to a brand for
product innovation, customer care, campaign management and other use cases.
7
http://www.sourcingfocus.com/site/opinionscomments/outsourcing_social_media_managing_legal_risk/
Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social? 8
	 You can also own all your content, which may be just as important. If you outsource, you can
encounter issues with sharing in-house content and integrating your other marketing efforts
with your social media efforts. For example, if you outsource content creation, the agency
will need easy access to everything from blog posts and white papers to product and people
photography. You may or may not be comfortable with that.
•	 You can build and operate a Global Command Center. This is an internal function for a brand
that can be invaluable in such use cases as brand image protection and real-time crisis management.
•	 You have a deep understanding of your brand and products. Even an agency who’s a long-term
partner can’t have the same in-depth understanding of corporate culture, core business values
and communication style that brand staff members have. That matters when it comes to engaging
in the online conversation with key influencers, detractors and other community members.
•	 You can control the tone, content and timing of engagement. Engaging on behalf of a brand
requires authenticity and sincerity—especially if the conversation surrounding your brand turns
negative. That’s not a time to have someone engaging with your audience who doesn’t have the
same values or understanding of your business, its operations and its goals.
•	 You can serve as community managers. Social media monitoring, site building and several
other tasks can be outsourced successfully, but many believe community management is best
left in house. (Note that on the list of commonly outsourced tasks on page 4, it’s in last place
at 4 percent.) Monitoring can simply mean alerting the proper internal parties of a problem
that arises in social. Community managers, however, have a personal relationship with many
members of their social media networks. Successful community managers identify influencers,
get buy-in on controversial changes as a trusted member of the group, and often engage offline
with many of their contacts.
	 What’s more, the level of trust required to be a community manager is often diluted if fans and
followers learn they’re dealing with an “outsider” from an agency. If you’re looking to fill a community
manager position, your networks will have an easier time accepting someone from the inside.8
•	 You won’t miss opportunities for personal contact. If you outsource engagement, customers
and prospects aren’t likely to meet in person the individuals they’ve been interacting with on a
social platform. That won’t happen if you keep the function in house.
The Case Against Brands
•	 Social is not a core competency. Monitoring, understanding and engaging take time and
expertise, and isn’t the principal business of your company. Also, when you keep social all
internal, there’s a risk the content will become stale if only one person or two people are
contributing to it. For agencies specializing in social, this is their core competency. Tasks like
using words and imagery to create compelling, persuasive, shareable content is their strong suit.
8
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32208/Social-Media-Outsourcing-Increases-128-in-Two-Years-New-Report.aspx
Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social? 9
•	 Cost of buying licenses for software tools. Depending on how extensively you plan to use
a social solution, it may be more effective to in essence “rent” one from an agency that can
distribute the cost of software among several clients.
•	 Cost of staffing the social function. To do social right, even if you’re a relatively small company,
you’ll need to dedicate one or more people to it full time. And the people you’ll need to hire will
be experienced in social media, good communicators, and have good business judgment. These
are not inexpensive, entry-level people. Also, can you afford to staff the social listening function
on a 24/7 basis, which is what companies who operate globally need to do? If an unhappy
customer tweets about a bad experience or posts a negative comment on your Facebook page,
you must respond quickly. The longer you wait, the more damage that negative review will do.
•	 Time required to analyze the social conversation and engage. Listening to the online
conversation is just step one. You then need to parse it, analyze it with the help of a social
media analysis solution, understand what’s being said and why, and engage with care. If you’re
not going to make this the day job of at least one and probably several staff members, you’re
probably better off outsourcing it to an agency who will.
“Unfortunately, there’s no right or wrong answer to the question of outsourcing
social media management. As with anything, it depends on the current state of your
business, your business model, your financial state, and how comfortable you are with the
idea of not having full control of everything in your business.”
— Jonathan Payne, Interactive Marketing Specialist, Strategexe Consulting Group
Social Media Management—A New and Rapidly Evolving
Business Function
As the social universe evolves and brands and agencies get better at using it to achieve business
objectives, the answers to who should own social media management will also evolve. For now, the
best approach is to be clear on what your objectives, resources and use cases are, map them to the
strengths and characteristics of your organization and your agency, then assign tasks accordingly.
As factors change, you can adjust roles as necessary to help your brand use the social channel as
intelligently and effectively as possible.
NetBase enables business leaders to manage and track marketing and content strategies with
real-time, fast and accurate Social Media Analytics. Clients include Coca-Cola, Kraft, Taco Bell, AMC,
National Geographic, Condé Nast, Jim Beam and J.D. Power and Associates.
For more information, visit: www.netbase.com
@NetBase NetBaseInc NetBase Solutions, Inc NetBaseInc
©2013 NetBase Solutions, Inc.
NetBase Solutions, Inc.
2087 Landings Drive
Mountain View | CA 94043
P 650.810.2100
F 650.968.4872
www.netbase.com
About NetBase

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Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social?

  • 1. Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social?
  • 2. Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social? 2 CONTENTS 3 Why Ownership Matters 4 What Tasks Do Marketers Outsource? 5 How Much Time Does Social Media Monitoring Take? 5 How Much Does Outsourcing Cost? 6 How Your Business Type Affects the Decision 7 Are There Legal Issues Involved in Outsourcing? 7 Brands as Social Managers—The Case For and Against 9 Social Media Management—A New and Rapidly Evolving Business Function
  • 3. Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social? 3 “If you want a job done well, do it yourself.” Fine advice, but does it apply to managing your presence in social media? Finding a way to get that critical job done well has become a high priority for brands and organizations of all sizes, but social managers are often unsure how to make it happen. That’s understandable: social is complex and evolving rapidly, and what’s right for one organization with a certain set of objectives and use cases isn’t right for another. Where do you start? As a social decision-maker at a brand, one key choice you need to make is whether to outsource social or not. And if you do decide to outsource, which use cases and tasks will you assign to the agency and which will you manage in house? Just to be clear: We’re not recommending one choice over another—compelling arguments can be made for both brands and agencies on many use cases. The goal of this paper is rather to give you a better understanding of the factors you should consider to help you make the right choice that will boost your brand’s success in social. Why Ownership Matters As long as someone’s managing your online presence, does it really matter whether you or your agency is in charge? It does. Key aspects of social media management are all affected by who’s doing it, including brand image, cost, quality and use of insights, lead generation, ownership of data, consistency and effectiveness of messaging, engagement policies and more. Just as with other outsourcing decisions, each organization considering that option has to determine what it’s trying to achieve and what are the most effective and cost-efficient ways to get there. You’ll have to weigh your unique mix of needs for online marketing, community management, customer service, product innovation ideas, crisis management and more to find the right fit for you. Note that “brand or agency” isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition: Many organizations outsource certain social media tasks, like design and development for a Facebook page, while keeping others in house, like managing their Facebook community. There’s no accepted best practice that says the brand or the agency has to own all aspects of social; in fact, for many brands and agencies, collaborating on social is efficient and cost-effective and turns out to be the best way to leverage the strengths of both organizations. “The companies that have the most effective social media communications are those that have a combination of internal and external people doing social media.” — Eve Mayer, CEO, Social Media Delivered, author of The Social Media Business Equation
  • 4. Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social? 4 What Tasks Do Marketers Outsource? What will an outsourced social media agency do for you? Here’s a description from one company’s website1 : “We take care of all the work, we optimize your messages, we monitor the reactions, and we reach out and respond directly with your customers on your behalf. It is a mistake to hire a company to be the social connection between your brand and your customers. But you can outsource most of the actual work—leaving you free to focus on the real value.” Apparently, that sounds like a good deal to more and more companies. The overall trend shows a steady increase in the number of firms outsourcing social. In 2010, only 14 percent of marketers outsourced social media marketing. In 2011, that number doubled to 28 percent. And in 2012, the percentage rose yet again, with 32 percent of marketers outsourcing social media.2 So more marketers in particular are partnering with agencies to handle social—but exactly what tasks are they outsourcing? 20% D esign/D evelopm ent A nalytics Content C reation M onitoring Research Strategy Status U pdates Com m unity M anagem ent 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% 11% Social Media Tasks Marketers Outsource to Third Parties 10% 7% 7% 6% 6% 4% The chart shows that tasks requiring more technical expertise are the most likely to be outsourced, while ones requiring the most in-depth knowledge of the brand and direct engagement with customers are likely to stay in house. 1 http://www.socialcontraptions.com 2 http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32208/Social-Media-Outsourcing-Increases-128-in-Two-Years-New-Report.aspx
  • 5. Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social? 5 How Much Time Does Social Media Monitoring Take? One of the main reasons outsourcing is appealing is that companies have discovered how time- consuming it is to simply monitor the social web. In fact, studies show it takes a midsize company about 32 hours a month to capably handle a single social media platform.3 That means real-time, constant monitoring. Doing the job well also demands a nuanced understanding of the customer and the brand, as well as knowledge of what events may be impacting the brand everywhere around the world, on every social platform where the brand lives. A recent post on the TechRepublic site 4 regarding the pros and cons of outsourcing social media cites Social Media Examiner’s recent survey results on time required for social. The survey reports that 36 percent of marketers are devoting one to five hours a week to their social efforts, and another 26 percent are spending six to 10 hours a week. Knowing those time estimates is useful in helping you make the in-house vs. outsourcing decision, but doesn’t necessarily tip the balance one way or the other. Some businesses want to do social monitoring but don’t have the staff hours available and don’t want to hire. For them, an agency makes sense. Mid-size or larger organizations may have staff available, or are willing to hire social specialists, and believe the function is so important to the brand that they want to keep it in house. How Much Does Outsourcing Cost? Recent research by The Content Factory5 found these cost ranges for outsourcing tasks to a professional social media marketing agency: • Launching a new Twitter account, complete with setup and outsourcing content creation/ consumer interaction (140 characters at a time), costs an average of $2,000–$4,000 per month. The total price range was $1,000–$7,500 per month. • Restructuring an existing Twitter account with “limited coaching” to achieve client goals costs between $1,000–$2,500 per month. • To set up a new Facebook account and provide limited ongoing training to business partners, online PR agencies charge an average of $2,500–$5,000 per month, with some going as high as $9,000. This also includes status updates and interacting with customers. • Creating a “comprehensive” strategy for social media marketing and outsourcing all work for all channels (with a minimum of two) costs anywhere from $3,000–$20,000 per month, with the industry average settling between $4,000–$7,000 per month. Starting the accounts from scratch and consulting on a 4- to 12-month contract, you’ll pay between $3,000–$15,000 per month. 3 http://www.forbes.com/sites/capitalonespark/2013/03/19/should-you-outsource-social-media-or-do-it-yourself/ 4 http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-decision-maker/pros-and-cons-of-outsourcing-social-media/ 5 http://www.contentfac.com/how-much-does-social-media-marketing-cost/
  • 6. Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social? 6 “Social media is still very new, and it’s still evolving, so it can be advantageous to have people on your team whose primary focus is social media. The good ones will be constantly learning and studying the field, and will have insights that are timely and comprehensive.” — Duane Craig in Tech Decision Maker How Your Business Type Affects the Decision Andreas Pouros, COO at Greenlight, points out that another factor in addition to time and cost is your type of business. Different types of businesses are better served by different in-house or outsourcing arrangements. One way to classify businesses is by the size and importance of your brand to your business. Think of your business as one of three types: a brand-driven business, an acquisition-driven business or a growth business brand.6 To figure out which you are, you can look at your paid search budget allocation and identify what proportion is spent on brand terms versus your other terms. In a brand-driven business, more than 80 percent of your paid search spend is allocated to your brand terms. For these businesses, the brand is their most significant asset by far, and the price and range of their goods and services are less important than brand equity. Examples are Coca-Cola, Walt Disney and Apple. If that describes your business, then your brand is the core reason people buy from you, so maintaining brand value is critical. That means keeping social in house—close to PR and customer support and the people who know the organization and brand the best— makes a lot of sense. An acquisition-driven business is the opposite of a brand-driven business. Only 10 percent or less of your paid search spend is allocated to your brand terms. If you’re this kind of business, what you sell or offer is far more popular than your brand. Examples are clothing retailers selling unbranded clothing, travel sites that do little or no offline advertising, and brands in the early stages of development. If turning off your non-brand pay-per-click (PPC) activities would result in significantly decreased revenue, you’re probably in this category. For these businesses, outsourcing social to a firm that specializes in such online marketing tactics as SEO, PPC, display and affiliate marketing makes sense. These “search agencies” can optimize your results based on responding rapidly to what people are saying and reading about you online. If you’re a growth business brand, your branded pay-per-click spend percentage falls somewhere between the first two types of business. Businesses like yours typically have recognizable brands, but exist in highly competitive sectors, so you need to promote your products in response to consumer needs and not just maintain brand mind share. 6 http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/6883-who-should-own-your-social-media-monitoring
  • 7. Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social? 7 For your business then, the decision is mostly about how important online is to you compared to offline. If online is crucial, you should probably keep the social function in house. If offline is more important, a full-service agency that handles a range of marketing activities, including social, can do an effective job of global brand management. Are There Legal Issues Involved in Outsourcing? According to Ashley Hurst, Partner in the Commercial Litigation team at Olswang LLP 7 , you need to balance the clear benefits of outsourcing, such as gaining access to specialist knowledge, against the risks of outsourcing a function that has the ability to go very wrong very fast. Keep in mind that marketing is just one aspect of your social presence; once you’re out there, you’re engaged in a dialogue with the entire online community, and some decisions about how and when to respond you may not want to leave to your agency. For example, if you’re considering outsourcing, you need to figure out who decides when to respond to a defamatory response to a blog post. What should be the response time? Who needs to approve new Twitter streams? Who’s monitoring the Facebook page outside of office hours? What is “on brand” and what’s “off brand”? How tolerant of criticism should your company and executives be? Has the agency received sufficient legal training? “Once a problem is spotted,” writes Hurst, “either by the company or its agencies, the company then needs to decide how to react. Empowering an agency to respond to social media comments may facilitate quick response but also runs the risk of being premature or off-message. It can therefore be helpful to think in advance of different levels of risk and devise procedures for dealing with each level. For example, a company may opt for a traffic light system whereby a green issue can be dealt with by the social media team, amber issues need to be escalated to the legal team, and red issues go straight to senior management. A pre-determined crisis team of specialists can also help save valuable time.” Brands as Social Managers—The Case For and Against At the level of specific use cases, like community management or category analysis, convincing arguments can be made for brand or agency as the right choice. At the highest level, though, there are overarching arguments for or against outsourcing. Here are some key ones. The Case For Brands • You can own and analyze the social data. If you outsource, and your agency goes out of business or you decide to change agencies, wouldn’t it be advantageous to own the social data about your brand, products and campaigns? Even putting that scenario aside, owning the data so you can analyze it anytime you want, any way you want, is clearly valuable to a brand for product innovation, customer care, campaign management and other use cases. 7 http://www.sourcingfocus.com/site/opinionscomments/outsourcing_social_media_managing_legal_risk/
  • 8. Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social? 8 You can also own all your content, which may be just as important. If you outsource, you can encounter issues with sharing in-house content and integrating your other marketing efforts with your social media efforts. For example, if you outsource content creation, the agency will need easy access to everything from blog posts and white papers to product and people photography. You may or may not be comfortable with that. • You can build and operate a Global Command Center. This is an internal function for a brand that can be invaluable in such use cases as brand image protection and real-time crisis management. • You have a deep understanding of your brand and products. Even an agency who’s a long-term partner can’t have the same in-depth understanding of corporate culture, core business values and communication style that brand staff members have. That matters when it comes to engaging in the online conversation with key influencers, detractors and other community members. • You can control the tone, content and timing of engagement. Engaging on behalf of a brand requires authenticity and sincerity—especially if the conversation surrounding your brand turns negative. That’s not a time to have someone engaging with your audience who doesn’t have the same values or understanding of your business, its operations and its goals. • You can serve as community managers. Social media monitoring, site building and several other tasks can be outsourced successfully, but many believe community management is best left in house. (Note that on the list of commonly outsourced tasks on page 4, it’s in last place at 4 percent.) Monitoring can simply mean alerting the proper internal parties of a problem that arises in social. Community managers, however, have a personal relationship with many members of their social media networks. Successful community managers identify influencers, get buy-in on controversial changes as a trusted member of the group, and often engage offline with many of their contacts. What’s more, the level of trust required to be a community manager is often diluted if fans and followers learn they’re dealing with an “outsider” from an agency. If you’re looking to fill a community manager position, your networks will have an easier time accepting someone from the inside.8 • You won’t miss opportunities for personal contact. If you outsource engagement, customers and prospects aren’t likely to meet in person the individuals they’ve been interacting with on a social platform. That won’t happen if you keep the function in house. The Case Against Brands • Social is not a core competency. Monitoring, understanding and engaging take time and expertise, and isn’t the principal business of your company. Also, when you keep social all internal, there’s a risk the content will become stale if only one person or two people are contributing to it. For agencies specializing in social, this is their core competency. Tasks like using words and imagery to create compelling, persuasive, shareable content is their strong suit. 8 http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32208/Social-Media-Outsourcing-Increases-128-in-Two-Years-New-Report.aspx
  • 9. Brand or Agency: Who Should Own Social? 9 • Cost of buying licenses for software tools. Depending on how extensively you plan to use a social solution, it may be more effective to in essence “rent” one from an agency that can distribute the cost of software among several clients. • Cost of staffing the social function. To do social right, even if you’re a relatively small company, you’ll need to dedicate one or more people to it full time. And the people you’ll need to hire will be experienced in social media, good communicators, and have good business judgment. These are not inexpensive, entry-level people. Also, can you afford to staff the social listening function on a 24/7 basis, which is what companies who operate globally need to do? If an unhappy customer tweets about a bad experience or posts a negative comment on your Facebook page, you must respond quickly. The longer you wait, the more damage that negative review will do. • Time required to analyze the social conversation and engage. Listening to the online conversation is just step one. You then need to parse it, analyze it with the help of a social media analysis solution, understand what’s being said and why, and engage with care. If you’re not going to make this the day job of at least one and probably several staff members, you’re probably better off outsourcing it to an agency who will. “Unfortunately, there’s no right or wrong answer to the question of outsourcing social media management. As with anything, it depends on the current state of your business, your business model, your financial state, and how comfortable you are with the idea of not having full control of everything in your business.” — Jonathan Payne, Interactive Marketing Specialist, Strategexe Consulting Group Social Media Management—A New and Rapidly Evolving Business Function As the social universe evolves and brands and agencies get better at using it to achieve business objectives, the answers to who should own social media management will also evolve. For now, the best approach is to be clear on what your objectives, resources and use cases are, map them to the strengths and characteristics of your organization and your agency, then assign tasks accordingly. As factors change, you can adjust roles as necessary to help your brand use the social channel as intelligently and effectively as possible.
  • 10. NetBase enables business leaders to manage and track marketing and content strategies with real-time, fast and accurate Social Media Analytics. Clients include Coca-Cola, Kraft, Taco Bell, AMC, National Geographic, Condé Nast, Jim Beam and J.D. Power and Associates. For more information, visit: www.netbase.com @NetBase NetBaseInc NetBase Solutions, Inc NetBaseInc ©2013 NetBase Solutions, Inc. NetBase Solutions, Inc. 2087 Landings Drive Mountain View | CA 94043 P 650.810.2100 F 650.968.4872 www.netbase.com About NetBase