In my professional capacity, I meet regularly with colleagues who work in and lead social media for some of the largest and most well-respected brands in the country.
During the past several years, I’ve noticed a pattern in these discussions: Social media professionals are quick to acknowledge (and commiserate over) relationships with their company’s attorneys and compliance partners, yet seldom mention their colleagues in PR as key stakeholders and collaborators.
In fact, I’ll go as far as to say that social media professionals seldom recognize the potential of their platforms as PR tools, which is unfortunate.
I might be biased in making these observations. After all, social media at Vanguard sits within the various marketing departments and not within PR itself.
That’s sometimes the case at other brands, of course, but it’s just as common to see social media managers report to the head of PR.
Similar to what I noted above, in those instances, I’ve heard social media pros complain that they struggle inside PR. “[PR] doesn’t get us,” I’ve heard them say. “They don’t understand that we’re marketing.” Or, “Our PR team just wants me to get them media coverage,” is another statement I’ve heard at conferences. “Their requests keep me from actually connecting with our customers.”
Whenever I run into this, I find myself reminding colleagues that the best companies in this space balance the two. Best-in-class brands know that social media is as much about PR as it is marketing.
Although our team doesn’t fall under PR, we consider PR to be a key stakeholder. Indeed, PR is a key stakeholder for all marketing at Vanguard. Owing to that, we interact regularly with our PR colleagues to ensure that we’re supporting their efforts (and vice versa). Here’s a handful of things we’ve learned along the way.
Email Works Wonders
First, we’ve set up a dedicated email group between social media managers and our PR team. Whenever one of our social professionals sees a customer complaint or potential issue on social media, they immediately share the post with PR via the email group. Our PR team, in turn, has established a daily coverage schedule so monitoring these potential problems is a shared responsibility. PR guides the decision of when and how to respond to issues on social media, and social teams are able to effectively triage problems without making sensitive calls in a silo.
An added benefit is that when problems arise, everyone who works in social media and PR receives the email. This means everyone can instantly be on the lookout, as well. PR, in turn, gets a direct and immediate line of sight into customer feedback that other types of communications don’t offer.
...But Face-to-Face is Necessary
We’ve also set up regular, consistent touch points around information sharing and content plans. Once a month, I meet with the chief of staff for the managing director of our Institutional Investor Group, the leader of our internal communications team, our executive writer and our PR representative.
As a group, we’re able to share what we’re working on, what big initiatives are coming, what we’re hearing from leaders and most important, what the five of us can do to help each other and stay in sync as situations arise. Although we seldom meet with a formal agenda, we all leave smarter and more knowledgeable than when we walked into the room.
Processes Develop Consistency
In addition to sharing our thought leadership and amplifying our internal marketing efforts, our social media teams look to earned media as another great source of content. That said, we value PR’s input on the nuances and background around media coverage, especially when we don’t always know the sensitivities around a particular topic.
Our social media managers are expected to keep an eye out for positive media coverage both on the web and via social channels. When they find something, their first step is to share it with both PR and our compliance division to ensure it’s appropriate for us to share as a brand. (It’s not a surprise that over time, our social teams often are able to anticipate potential PR or legal problems before sending articles over for consideration.) In those instances where we are able to amplify positive media coverage, it’s a win-win for everyone involved.
Measure Qualitative Wins, as Well
We all know that social media has its own set of metrics and terminology. Social professionals love to talk about clicks, engagement, impressions and all the other numbers that are used to measure their influence.
As we know also, good metrics aren’t quantitative only, they’re qualitative as well.
Owing to that, our team tracks social media mentions of our brand, as well as unsolicited shares and posts of positive earned media. While certainly smaller in number compared to other social media metrics, these earned media examples show PR’s influence with our audience in a way traditional media can’t. While the publication of a story demonstrates success for PR, social media shares and mentions show that those efforts have legs, that people actually read and appreciate them.
Collaboration is key
A concerted effort to maintain a healthy, collaborative relationship between our groups complements these initiatives. It’s not unusual for me to call our PR team once or twice a week, in addition to the other regular efforts. Doing so allows us to provide candid feedback, discuss urgent opportunities and find ways to work together.
Whether it’s social media holding back on a research paper or piece of sponsored content so PR can give journalists the first opportunity to read and cover it, or PR leveraging one of our blog posts as a way to strategically start discussions with journalists, our teams are able to work together to support each other’s efforts because we’re not afraid to pick up the phone and talk.
Regardless of where your social media team sits on the org chart, there are a multitude of benefits to building a strong culture of collaboration between social media and PR. With the right alignment and open communication, successful integration is possible.
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