An excellent panel sponsored by the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association was convened last night, great crowd and questions. The central question of the night however, seemed to be elusive. The panel was billed as Who Controls Social Media in the Enterprise, and it didn’t seem to me that there was a clear answer. Wonderful anecdotes and ways to test social media internally and externally, but no clear answer to the central question, which for me also answers the question.

In general, the conversation about social media among these companies’ and their commentary on social media in the majority of larger companies led me to the following observations:

1) Social media is viewed at best as a tactic to be tested and at worse a side show.

2) Social media is about relationships and those take time, time large companies don’t have given our culture of immediate results. A supporting example of this are loyalty programs that provide a discount for customer, but only if they buy within a certain window. I see how that attempts to accomplish a minor win for the customer and a revenue increase before the end of the quarter for the company, but there is nothing social about that. A catch ‘em, clean ‘em, filet ‘em repeat approach.

3) Social media just doesn’t have the numbers for companies that play in the middle income bracket. Companies on modest and shrinking profit margins are not seeing enough dollars move through their coffers as a direct result of social media. Sure it’s nice to have raving fans embracing your brand, lots of balloons and cake for internal office recognition, but for most senior execs the $ needle isn’t moving far enough in those areas that are directly attributable to social media efforts.

4) Lastly, social media is not viewed as a comprehensive communications platform. So while a retailer may have thousands of loyal fans on Facebook in a program inspired by customer relations, that same understanding about social networks is not shared by say the PR department that dismisses a bloggers inquiry. There is a disconnect in either understanding or appreciation for social media across these large enterprises. When this happens, the cultural tendency is to dig your heels in about your current perspective and not open your mind up to a holistic vision of social media’s implementation throughout the enterprise. There will be more on this topic in a future Marketing Edge podcast with Robert Scoble to be posted June 2.

Panel Members

· Jim Cuene, Director, Interactive, General Mills 
· Brad Smith,  VP of eCommerce & Digital Marketing, Fingerhut Direct Marketing
· Gary Koelling, Creative Director, Social Technology, Best Buy
· Jason Kleckner, Manager, Information Architecture, Target Corporation
· Moderator: Michael Kraabel, Group Creative Director, Gage

Yes I copied this from the MIMA Events page. Thanks

Hat Tips

Gary Koelling – Most candid answers award, he is Twitter gold for any live writer

Jason Kleckner – Best answer of tough question with grace and insight award. Nice job

Here’s a podcast of the MIMA panel Who Controls Social Media in the Enterpriseevent – however, this was an abbreviated file when I downloaded. I’m going to leave the link up just in case it is fixed. Minor gripe here to the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association, why isn’t there an audio player on the page for this podcast? There must be a good reason, standing by. If you fix it, I’ll come back and amend this post.