We’ve (unintentionally) put social in the corner

[shaownhasan]

When I joined Sprout Social in 2018, part of my role as CMO was educating my peers about the value of social media. I remember how executives were unclear of social’s impact on the success of their strategic initiatives or revenue performance.

Fast forward to today and it’s difficult to picture any serious organization operating without a social media strategy. Leading brands recognize social is a goldmine for consumer and industry insights; where advertising data else can you get unfiltered feedback from your target audience or see how trends take off in real time? In fact, data from the latest Sprout Social Index™ reveals 76% of social marketers say their team’s insights inform other departments like product, sales and recruitment. That’s only going to continue as social becomes more ingrained in our everyday lives.

In five short years, I’ve seen the narrative around social media shift from it being an unproven marketing activity to a critical source of business intelligence. And while it’s long overdue to see companies invest in their social teams, we’re seeing new challenges emerge in the forms of how connected social marketers are to their colleagues across the organization.

For brands to truly take advantage of all that social has to offer, CMOs need to tackle the silos restricting the free flow of social data across their entire organization and isolating their social teams.

Brands may be all in on social media, but nearly half (43%) of social teams still feel siloed from other departments. This sentiment is felt even more strongly in larger organizations, with 48% of mid-market and 44% of enterprise social teams saying they feel siloed. How we’ve historically structured social media teams and the tools we’ve added to our tech stack are at the root of these feelings.

Data visualization from the Sprout Social Index, showing that 43% of social marketers feel their teams are siloed (even though 65% agree that other teams inform their social efforts and 76% agree that social insights inform other teams.)
Like most organizations, there’s a good chance your social media team currently sits within the larger marketing department simply because that’s where social media got its start for many brands. But with departments like product and sales looking to leverage social data, it begs the question of who should own the function of managing social media. Factor in that 64% of social teams align staff members to a specific network, known as a network-based structure, and those silos within an already isolated team become that much deeper.