“Our IT guy has been looking after our social media strategy,” grumbled the boss, “we don’t really know much about that stuff.”
A constant in business is that anything that vaguely involves electricity gets flicked to the IT guru – setting up a phone’s speed dial, clearing a jammed photocopier or resetting the office burglar alarm are all things tech support gets called to fix. They breathe a sigh of relief that electric typewriters aren’t around anymore.
In the early of the Internet, it was the techs who were asked to set company web sites – which is like asking your plumber to run a cafe because making coffee involves water.
Of course some IT folk turned out to be good at designing websites – just as some plumbers turn out to be world class baristas – but it’s a gamble finding out.
Today the poor tech support teams in the less proactive organisations find themselves lumbered with the social media duties, something most of them don’t care about and barely understand themselves.
For those businesses, the problem is the corporate social media accounts are now the shopfront along with customer support and, with most journalists using social media, the PR department as well.
If you’re happy with your geeks looking after your media relations, sales and customer support then ask the IT department to look after the website and social media. Otherwise, you might want to take things a bit more seriously.
Let me put that another way…
“If you are happy for the least socially skilled employees in your company to be managing your reputation and relationships …”
Hehe Indeed Paul.
When the boss says “We don’t really know much about that stuff.” they are in good company. Engineering and tech staff likely don’t either.