Who's Doing your Social Media?

More meetings and more discussions about Social Media. I have to say, this topic is not only the talk of town, but the only talk in town. During a meeting I held with  a Marketing and Corporate Communication Director at a multinational FMCG company based in Dubai, Social Media suddenly became the focal discussion and I found myself asking the director innocently " Who does your Social Media?", the answer came swift with a bit of a confident smile " The IT". In reality it wasn't an unexpected answer, I didn't expect the director of that company in particular to give such an answer, but it was there.

There's a general conception amongst a few of us that Social Media is complicated and requires the skills and focus of those who sit in the server room or right next to it. Maybe it's so because they actually do spend lot's of time roaming the cyber world, but let's not forget few things about social media in particular:

1. Social media is all about enrichment, entertainment and engagement.
2. Social media can serve brands but requires brand building knowledge and reputation development skills.
3. Social media is another mode of communication that has degenerated as a result of a specific demand to access information in the fastest way possible (personal and commercial).
4. Social media is segmented communication that addresses specific needs i.e: facebook is about pictorials, whilst YouTube is videos and twitter is micro blogging.

I believe that to a large extent, IT professionals are not worried about all that and not interested to, their main role is to keep things working and functioning, they create the infrastructure but can't simulate the use of it.

My take on this, if PR and Communication experts don't get their hands dirty with the cyber world and learn how to set up a facebook account \ or start a group, and/or learn how to blog, design their blog...go on twitter, populate their blog... Future of communication will come from the server room and will not necessarily incorporate all or any of the points I mentioned above. So what?! well, it means, shit load of people will need to find other jobs in other careers and once IT professionals take over, well, your PR degree will not ring a bell.

So c'mon people, go there and keep discovering, don't worry, it's created so that everyone can use it and not only those who created it.

Will talk again soon.