You're right. No one should own it. But ultimately, not looking at it through a marketing lens is detrimental to the longevity of the brand. Everyone should be able to use social media and communicate in it, but if you're doing it on behalf of a company, interactions and engagement should be driven by the brand promise and exercised with professional care. The way businesses are structured, the marketing department is still ideally equipped to supervise and empower (not necessarily control or restrict) social media activity.

Marketing 101 has always preached the aspect of two-way dynamics… "marketing is not just concerned with communicating with publics, but most important, listening to publics." Social media significantly ramps up the significance of two-way communication and our ability to use it as a marketing tool.

Concerning responsibility, it is incumbent upon institutions to begin to educate both internal and external publics as to the advantages (and pitfalls) of social media in branding the institution. Encourage their voices to be heard in order to become part of the conversation.

I agree with you on the fact that social media is becoming as indispensable as the phone, and that everyone in an organization uses it. But I see it as Marketing's role to indoctrinate the rest of the company on the right way to use it and ensure everyone is on-brand and on-strategy in their communication. Definitely there will be all types of marketing specialists within the company executing tactics at the "middleman" level as you say (as well as non-marketing employees engaging in social media). It's just that their efforts should all be coordinated within the boundaries of the organization's marketing objectives. Which naturally falls to Marketing to lead and direct.

The debate could be moot, though. In the future, this may end up on the shoulders of the Chief Strategy Officer (which I believe is just a really strong Chief Marketing Officer with business and operational vision. Or a swap of those.) The marketing function is growing and its execution is becoming more intertwined with every other department. Which is reinforced by your point that everyone within the organization is engaging in social media.

Ultimately, whether it's a CMO or a CSO, there needs to be someone with global organizational vision to direct, monitor, and gauge the efficacy of marketing strategies and tactics, which include social media. For most structured organizations that naturally falls to the Marketing Director or Chief Marketing Officer. To have a social media position that operates independently of that umbrella could actually be counter-productive.

When I say "marketing" I don't necessarily mean ringing a cash register. Marketing is an aggregate of functions designed to sell a service, product, participation, opinion, or concept. Tangible or intangible.

Anything we engage in with the expectation of persuasion and influence, targeted response, or desired result is selling (or marketing) in some form or another. If a non-profit is soliciting donations, the organization must first "solicit" the value of the program to influence donors. If a non-profit is engaging in an awareness campaign (and not actively seeking donations) it is attempting to "sell" the importance of the issue to influence participation. That's still marketing. But yes, I do like the word influence.

As far as the relationship of social media within the organization, the key is to bring marketing and social media together, rather than have a social media person off doing their own thing without the influence and supervision of whoever is responsible for setting marketing objectives and strategies. In small organizations it may all be the same person, but in larger ones it's critical that everyone works under consistent objectives and strategies.

I realize the structure or goals of certain types of companies might be different. But I think in most organizations there will typically be one set of global objectives, and then another set of marketing objectives. Social media is just one tool to help achieve those objectives. It all comes together more cohesively when efforts are coordinated.

Marketing is about moving people closer to the organization, in service of achieving business goals. If you're a nonprofit, that can be "selling" per se (tickets), or it can be advocacy, or donations.

The real disconnect comes from the well-entrenched belief that Marketing (or at least the function as we've come to know it) is somehow separate and distinct from business strategy. To me, it is, was, and always has been inseparable. Taken that way, then, social media is as indispensable–to all departments, functions, and employees–as the telephone. Everyone needs to use it, but it's not the only way business gets done.

Since Marketers are, ideally, professional communicators, they function best as resources on how to shape and guide messages based on desired outcomes and intended audiences. The LEAST effective use of good marketing folks are as middlemen, because their expertise is communication, not content.

Just like you don't charge the Marketing Department to answer every phone that rings in your company, it's unrealistic to expect Marketing to answer the social media bell for everyone in an organization.

Coming from the nonprofit perspective, I have to say that marketing and social media aren't about selling, they're about influencing: getting you to buy into my cause, help me spread the word, support it with your time and money, change your personal behavior in response to my efforts, etc.

There also are non-sales objectives in business that are extremely well-served by social media, so I guess I don't entirely agree with your global objective. If social media enables me to position my organization as a superior place of employment and results in my attracting a higher quality of applicant, is this sales? At some level everything is sales, but I prefer the term "influence" because it can include all the potential outcomes we seek through marketing that don't necessarily fit under the sales heading.

Re marketing and branding, the suggestion that either is dead is silly. As you point out, it's the nature of the relationship between organization and stakeholder that's changed, and so the dynamics of who controls what have been altered. There a lot less dictating going on and a whole lot more collaboration in shaping who my organization is and what value it offers to the marketplace.