Responsibilities and challenges of social media managers

Abstract

Within the last years enterprises massively began to adapt social media for internal usage. They do so in order to increase their knowledge management as well as to make collaboration and communication more efficient. However, until now, very little is known about employees who are responsible for adaption processes and the management of the internal social media. In our study we conducted 15 interviews with "social media managers" of 15 large German enterprises. We found that the role of a social media manager is faced with enormous challenges (e.g. providing information about the added value of social media) while on the other hand they lack the power to make decisions (e.g. regarding staff and budget). © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.