Page 392 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

Public relations

Marketing and public relations have a symbiotic relationship, and in some orga-
nizations, public relations rolls up into the marketing organization. Both groups
have important roles to play in the world of social media, but they come at it from
different places.

Fundamentally, the marketing function owns the relationship with the consumers
and is the steward of the brands. With the relationships often being formed and
nurtured in social media, it becomes critical for the marketing function to lead all
social media marketing efforts. This means that the following activities are typi-
cally led by the marketing team:

» Defining the brand’s social voice
» Managing the social media platform pages
» Owning and driving social calendar activities

» Running social media campaigns across social media
» Planning and buying all social media advertising
» Coordinating all community management efforts

However, in larger organizations public relations has a critical role to play, too.
They manage relationships with the media and other key influencers, who in turn
heavily influence consumer perception. Often, the mainstream media treats social
media as the place to distribute its stories. Furthermore, the most successful and
largest social influencers online often behave like media companies as well. As a
result, the place at which marketing and public relations intersect in social media
marketing is also where influencer management takes place. When it comes to
social media influencer management, both the marketers and the PR profession-
als have valuable and important roles to play. It is in this area that tight collabora-
tion is required.

The following activities are typically led by the PR team:

» Leading all mainstream media relationships

» Driving core communication plans with outbound PR efforts
» Running all communication crisis management efforts
» Jointly managing social influencer relationships

376 PART 5 Old Marketing Is New Again with SMM