New Chart: Who is Outsourcing Social Marketing Responsibilities?

By Sergio Balegno, Research Director

Few organizations are outsourcing social marketing responsibilities


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Social marketing responsibilities are outsourced less often than traditional marketing responsibilities. Social marketing requires an intimate knowledge of the brand and -- due to the personal nature of social media interactions -- users prefer to hear directly from an organization rather than from an intermediary.

The bad news is that you more than likely will have to build your social marketing team from internal resources, inside and outside the marketing department. But the good news is that these internal resources are everywhere and many are already participating in social media for personal and professional purposes.

For example, willing and able technical resources can often be found in engineering. Many engineers and technicians are active participants in discussion forums related to their field. They can contribute their knowledge to your company’s social marketing programs in several ways: posting about technical issues on blogs; moderating a discussion group; or writing technical content.

In customer service you’ll find recruits for your Twitter support site where they can build a following of users looking for solutions to their problems. The same role they are trained to play in a different medium.

Sales is often a great place to find outgoing personalities willing to build communities of contacts and moderate your company’s Facebook brand page or LinkedIn discussion group.

Social marketing teams are often composed of individuals from various departments, each contributing a few hours to social marketing each week.

For additional research data and insights about social marketing, download and read the free Executive Summary from MarketingSherpa’s Social Marketing ROAD Map Handbook.