In the last several weeks, the SOCIALtality team has spoken with several potential, enterprise-level AlphaTesters. It’s an exciting time to be a part of an organization bringing an unprecedented level of measurement, analysis and ultimately, accountability to both Social Media and a company’s full, marketing channel mix. Each week, we’re discovered by a growing crowd of newly-intrigued individuals.

I’d love to believe that our awareness-building efforts are solely responsible for generating this momentum, yet I think it has more to do with internal changes in the organizations themselves. Companies are moving beyond Trial Phase of Social Media Maturity in growing numbers. They’ve become comfortable with entry-level monitoring and measurement and now seek an intelligence solution that can match the organization’s growing desire to leverage Social Media more strategically.

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Yet, we find evidence of measurement silos in many of these organizations. We often begin our presentations with the following graphic, illustrating what our measurement and analysis methodology encompasses:

 

More often than not, this graphic is greeted with a small amount of hesitancy and trepidation. It seems that many organizations divide their communications channel responsibilities among several different groups. We find the biggest divide is often between the Website Team (those with responsibility for maintaining and optimizing the site, often including SEO and SEM) and the Social Media Team. The Web Team is often more closely associated with the IT Group and the Social Media Team seems to be closely aligned with Events or Outbound Marketing Teams.

As companies begin to approach Social Media more strategically, it is essential that they bridge the internal gaps between Teams and responsibility silos in order to create an environment conducive to true Marketing Optimization. Without an integrated, holistic picture of performance encompassing all channels, true optimization may elude even the most strategic organizations.

The first step is to identify a measurement solution that can measure and analyze each channel’s performance and then quantify the relationships between channel performance. A tool like ours can help a company fully understand and quantify how a focused Social Media effort can affect organic search and the receptivity of the audience to the latest email campaign. We aren’t the only tool out there, but I think we might be the most comprehensive. Many organizations rely on monitoring tools yet, there scope is often limited to the measurement of conversation threads, share of voice, etc. We’ve found that reliance on these tools can sometimes strengthen rather than break down the walls that separate marketing teams.

Step two should be the creation of a cross-functional marketing group. Perhaps by taking the leader of each individual team, an organization could create a marketing “steering committee” whose members collectively share the responsibility for marketing’s big picture and report directly to the CMO. This group would share the CMO’s responsibility for the big picture and could be tasked with creating the type of cross-channel, long-term initiatives that can be difficult to create in a more delineated marketing structure.

How have your organizations bridged the marketing silos?

Image by Luke Olsen

Tags: marketing channel, Social Intelligence Engine, Social Media Measurement, Social Media Strategy

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 6th, 2010 at 12:00 AM by MattC and is filed under Strategy and Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.