For many companies, just getting started is the hardest part.  Namely, who is going to own social media and social media marketing and be accountable for it?  This seems to stump most organizations.  Is it Marketing, Public Relations (PR), Information Technology (IT), the executive suite or is it a new department?  It is difficult to get started if you don’t know who is going to develop strategy and execute.

I personally meet with dozens of agencies across the country and notice some interesting patterns.  Traditional agencies that either run through existing teams or have developed a digitally focused practice seem to focus more on tools and usually in combination with a traditional campaign.  PR agencies on the other hand are typically further along on messaging into existing consumer networks (bloggers, facebook, twitter, youtube, etc) and measuring impact and sentiment.  Certainly there are exceptions although this is my experience to date.  So if that is typical in agencies, what is typical in corporate departments? 

According to Eric Schwartzman’s report, titled, 2009 Digital Readiness Report: Essential Online Public Relations and Marketing Skills, it shows that “public relations owns the responsibility for web strategy relative to blogging, podcasting or RSS; social search; social networking; microblogging and, to a lesser extent, web content management. PR prevails in comparison to marketing, IT, HR and Executive Management.

Email marketing and search engine optimization are owned by marketing, but SEO only slightly so. The organizations interviewed for the study include corporations (22%), PR/marketing agencies (44%), non-profits/associations (14%), government agencies (6%), academic institutions (7%) and those classified as “other” (6%). The respondents were 278 public relations, marketing and human resource professionals chosen to identify trends regarding their approach to social media.

Jason Falls made some interesting insights on the report, “The overall conclusion of the study was that public relations and marketing professionals had better be equipped to handle social media if they hope to get a job in the industry. The study includes some fantastic insights and is, perhaps, the first in-depth look at social media and new media marketing needs in the public relations industry.”

This gets us to our topic for this week on the positioning of PR in the pecking order of accountability and execution.  We got a real pro to cover this topic, Todd Defren from Shift Communications.   Todd’s reputation and hands on work in the industry will provide for an exceptional discussion.  The questions:

Topic: Where PR Belongs in the Corporate Pecking Order with Social Media

Q1:  Where is PR in the pecking order of must-do’s for social media and social media marketing?

Q2:  What should a PR plan integrated with social media look like?

Q3:  What is an ideal skill set for the new-age PR person?

Join Todd this week Tuesday 10/6 at noon EST and follow along with #socialmedia or on our LIVE page.