There’s still a quiet little war being fought that erupts once in a while and spills out into mainstream. It exists between the old school marketers and the new guys that have come on the scene as advocates of change.

The confrontation always seems to boil down to who owns social media: The Marketing Team or The PR Guru’s?

It’s a common thought that social media should be treated just like any other channel for marketing. It has established rules, a fundamental purpose as well as variable strengths and weaknesses. It’s also good for crafting and shaping opinions, so on the surface it seems like it would predominantly fall in the realm of PR.

To position it in that manner would be a mistake unfortunately. That move would cause it to lose authenticity and create restrictions on messaging. If PR has the rope, then what about others within the organization? What about other promotions and value that can be delivered? It’s not feasible for PR to manage the multitude of voices in an organization.

So that leaves us with Marketing. Social media is a mass of contact points, and each one impacts the organization/brand/individual in a different way. Because this, I fall back on the same reason I say no to PR. The organization is made up of more than just the Marketing group.

Social media does indeed need to be owned by someone, but it should be a team that is specifically designed to represent the various facets of the company and deliver messages that represent the organization as a whole – not just from a marketing and PR perspective.

Often the best teams are made up of people who carry knowledge and understanding of both marketing and PR along with the fundamental understanding of what it means to talk WITH consumers and not AT them. Those organizations that rely heavily on a marketing or PR department will find themselves mired in the traditional corporate speak and ill-delivery of messages that never quite fall on the consumers the right way.

Not to say that all marketing and PR departments get it wrong. Certainly those that have restructured and changed their way of thinking to a more modern position on social media and customer engagement actually get it. They deliver their messages quite well more often than not. It’s those still living under the old rules of marketing and PR that cause businesses to struggle the most.

If any organization wants to remain ahead of the pack with social media marketing, there will need to be a hybrid team – and change is necessary.

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