Who's in charge of social media?

[Justin]

After having dabbled in social media for the past couple of years, our institution has decided to really start utilizing social media to a fuller extent.  Until this point, our web team has been the main contributor to our social media efforts.  However, our admissions office is the one who has really taken the lead on this new effort, which is great, but the problem that we're having right now is that no one really "owns" the management of our social media strategy as a whole.

So my question is, who is in charge of social media efforts at your institution, and what department does it fall under?

[Adam Lebo]

We have essentially a PR team that we call the Communications Dept. This group handles all social media and directs the overall feel of our websites as well as doing the graphic design work for the college. This way all social media interactions, websites, articles and publications have a consistent feel to them and all come from the same source.

Our web team and communications dept work very closely together with the web team managing everything on the backend and finding/implementing solutions to projects and problems.

[vivistar]

I work for an academic department and we are primarily in charge of our own social media comm, however, the campus-wide social media efforts are conducted primarily by our marketing and communications office.

[Kathie Kentfield]

Our Manager of Creative Services is responsible for the creative development of the College’s printed pieces, social media content, and video stories.  She is a member of the Marketing and Communications department, which also includes the web team.  She created our Social Media policy: http://ww2.sjc.edu/PDF/CollegeRelations/social-media-policy.pdf.  She oversees the Social Media Committee which is comprised of faculty and staff from various departments on campus.

[Erik Hagen]

This is a good overview of different models: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/04/15/framework-and-matrix-...

We have an odd mix of organic + coordinated. Marketing/Web acts as central team, and we maintain the main university Facebook/Twitter/Youtube accounts. Some departments work with us to get started and we stay aware of what they are doing, but other departments just start up on their own and we don't find out until months down the road. Then I look at what they're doing, which is followed by a *facepalm*

I don't know if anyone should really "own" it in a strict sense - you have to be nimble and respond quickly and that's usually done best by the people closest to the customer. But a central group should create and distribute guidelines and best practices, and make sure others adhere to branding and visual identity (and then do some kind of monitoring). Measurement is still a question mark, though. Everyone just wants to do it - not so much interest in figuring out if its working.

[vivistar]

I agree with you, Erik.  Guidelines and best practices are important. I would say also communicate these best practices to students as well, if they contribute to the social media messages of the school. If they are aware of norms and expected good conduct, then they won't regret any awful/inappropriate post when they leave the school and are trying to find a good job.  Also, I agree with your statement about metrics, someone should be keeping a good eye regarding the effectiveness of this strategy... after all, time and money are being spent in resources who need to be vigilant of the social media that is being managed.