Clay McDaniel of Spring Creek Group wrote a great post on Mashable today entitled "HOW TO: Avoid a Social Media Disaster" – Aside from some basic stuff, he brought up an interesting point about community managers' role vis a vis other departments. Take a look…
The community manager should work with the executive and PR teams to decide who will respond to which type of comments. High-level “red alerts” need to be handled by a top executive, preferably someone both knowledgeable and accountable to your customer base. The PR team should, of course, be integral in crafting all outbound communications, but in rapid-response situations it’s best to have a key executive who’s already provided his or her willingness to be accountable and available.
Getting the community manager to work directly with the executive and PR teams is great because in a lot of situations executives and PR teams (less so) aren't really aware of social media protocols for a response. Its very easy for an executive who is not used to using social tools to make an ass themselves on twitter or other tools. As Clay mentions, the PR team needs to be involved and I agree with that however when it comes to responding using social tools, the community manager should have the last say. Just sayin…
