---
title: "Whose job is social media in organisations?"
url: https://www.simonwakeman.com/blog/2008/08/06/whose-job-is-social-media-in-organisations/
description: "Consultant and fractional COO for scale-up businesses. I help founders, leaders and investors in scaling businesses create sustainably high performing organisations."
published: 2008-08-06T07:46:23+00:00
modified: 2026-04-11T16:25:10+00:00
author: Simon Wakeman
---
# Whose job is social media in organisations?

## Whose job is social media in organisations?

If you’ve got ten minutes to spare, it’s well worth checking out [this post](http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/weblog/orchestrating_social_media_in_business_somebody_needs_to_do_it/) on Shel’s blog.  
While it’s long, it’s a great summary of the debate about who should be responsible for social media in an organisational context.  
I agree with Shel’s conclusion that, in the absence of a specialist social media team, the PR/communications function within an organisation is probably where responsibility for social media should lie. He also has a good summary of the social media functions that such a team should fulfil. As he says, “answer is simple in concept, complex in execution”.  
The post also makes the point that:

> Corporations don’t communicate. People do.

That’s something worth remembering for communicators, particularly in my experience in internal communications where there is a desire for messages to come from the corporate centre, rather than a leader in the organisation – inherently weakening the traction that messages have with the intended audience.