Social Media Marketing For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Choosing the Owner of Your Organization’s SMM Voice

There’s no question that you need a SMM voice for the social web. It is instrumental to forging relationships with prospects, customers, and expert, positional, and referential influencers in addition to the industry at large. But setting your objectives up front is as important as knowing the difference between your SMM voice and your brand voice. It’s no use participating if you do so in a manner that’s in conflict with the fundamental ethos of the social web. You invariably do more damage to your brand and credibility than you may realize. Remember that whatever mistake you make in the social web gets quickly amplified, so set your objectives carefully, recognize how different your SMM voice is from your brand, and choose the right people to play the roles.

If you’re a small company, either the CEO (chief executive officer) or the CMO (chief marketing officer) should always be your SMM voice or at least one of your SMM voices. Even Zappos, a mammoth shoe company, uses its CEO, Tony Hsieh, as its key SMM voice even after its acquisition by Amazon. The strategy works well, and given that it’s building and establishing the brand primarily through social media marketing, the question of how the SMM voice conflicts with its brand voice doesn’t really arise. The brand and SMM voices are perfectly aligned. That may not be the case ...