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Photo courtesy of Marieke IJsendoorn-Kuijpers (2006)

I came across an infographic not too long ago that was (you guessed it) pretty informative! The graphic illustrates an example of how airlines are allocating more resources to social media by getting staff from more than one department actively involved with the distribution of content. This collaborative approach allows different departments (whether that be customer service, marketing or e-commerce) to share their unique voice and area of expertise with the members of public they are serving.

The infographic defines the difference between a traditional ‘dedicated’ social media model and the integrated approach mentioned above:

Dedicated Model: Staff are solely dedicated to social media function (typically those that work in the corporate communications department).

Integrated Model: Staff from different departments are social media-trained.

The graphic shows those airlines using the dedicated approach have significantly less Twitter followers, Facebook fans and Klout scores than those that use the integrated model.

Why is this? Well, it’s pretty simple: the larger the team you have devoted to social media, the greater the network. A team of two people dedicated to social media in the corporate communications department may only spend a few hours a day engaging with different platforms. If a team of 30 people spend one hour each focusing on social media every day, think of how much more content and discussion there would be?

Now this simple analysis doesn’t mean that an integrated model is the best in every situation or in your organization, but hopefully it’ll give you a little food for thought.

 

Source: Mashable (June 2011)