Do companies need to start hiring social media teams?

Whether to hire (or appoint) social media specialists depends on your company situation. I agree with Steve that marketers who are tactically focused on a single program type can get tunnel vision and lose sight of real objectives.

However, social media requires a new mind-set, new processes, new skills, new metrics, and new technologies. Where is all of this going to come from unless you make it a significant part of someone’s job description? How will all this come about unless you carve time for someone to accomplish this and make it available to the rest of the company?

Even for small companies, I recommend specialists when something important is new and you need to ensure successful incubation and rollout. You might not need to have someone full-time dedicated and that person might not even need to be in marketing.

Once your company has established a successful track record and the foundation is in place, then you should roll social out more broadly. Even larger companies who can afford to maintain social media specialists should not isolate this important area forever, but make sure that “social” eventually becomes a core expertise across the marketing organization.

The social media campaign is just like any other media campaign and planning. It has a definite set of rules as it may be for print media, radio or television media.

For the traditional media buying, do an organization hire seperate resources for print, radio or television. No, its a complete waste. Marketer of an organization based on his Annual Operating Plan or Budget buys the media through a professional advertising or a media buying agency. Buying a media, is not an individual's core competence, it's the work of a team of experts who work through analytics to launch campaign and do post tracking. The marketer sets the budget, plan, demographics and expected outcome.

Similarly for social media planning and buying one should higher a professional agency to do this work. They just need to define the objective and the expected outcome.

Therefore no need to hire a seperate team, just upgrade the social media knowledge of your existing marketing expert and leave the rest to a professional social media marketing expert.

Thanks!!

Social media teams have their place, but not in the initial stages of corporate social media use for small to mid-sized companies. I agree with Kathleen that someone needs to have ownership of the task(s) for the social media strategy to move forward.

Implementation of social media and social media marketing is a step-wise process. For instance, if the person who is assigned the task is most comfortable initially in using LinkedIn, then that may be where the company should begin in its efforts. That person then becomes responsible for learning all that would be necessary to connect LinkedIn to the corporate goals. Once a comfort zone has been reached and use becomes more second nature, more platforms can be added, such as Twitter, Facebook, Blogging, YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

This step-wise process is essential because each platform has its own social norms that should be adhered to and leveraged appropriately. To expect one individual to know all platforms at once can be overwhelming. As well, the necessary connections that need to be made between platforms for proper social media marketing and sales funneling may fail because the expectations are too high for 1) the time allotted and 2) for the number of platforms of expertise required. As the business grows, then perhaps, more people could be added to the social media team, either from those within the company or by hiring new individuals to fulfill the tasks. This team will still need a leader who knows social media, the industry, and the organization itself. That learning needs to occur before the team is organized.

That is not to say that the person who owns the social media within the organization should not be dialoging with with others within the company. Dialog is necessary so that all are privy to developments online and can help guide the social media specialist through effective use, linked to corporate goals. This "think tank" approach is the most effective because there is more than one mind working toward the business goals. So even though there isn't a social media team, per say, there can be a collective emphasis and direction for use.

Many organizations are deciding the best approach, which I believe is to tap into your internal social media champions first. A core social media team needs to be assembled who will create the vision and the higher level social media goals. However, this team has to enlist the support of a wider coalition from the various departments (social media moves across the company) to be the champions and daily managers of social outreach for their departments. These employees are also responsible for setting their own departmental goals. Of course, education and policies are really important for all employee participation, especially as social media rolls out to the rest of the organization. Companies my opt to have a consultant or an agency guide them during this process and to get them set up with their tracking/monitoring, measurement, and social resources, but I'm a firm advocate of leveraging the power of your own internal evangelists first to be the front line with social consumers.