Balancing Unified Company Brand with Individual Department Needs

Thanks for the invite to the Social Media COI Shawn.  I didn’t have a chance to jump in on the suggestion portion of the discussion but I wanted to echo one specifically.  That suggestion was from Tiffany from Microsoft and revolved around the act of leveraging the various channels within the organization and properly balancing the need for a unified ‘brand’ versus the need for specific channels of outbound communication from other departments.
 
My organization recently hired a Social Media “expert” and she is of course located within the Marketing department.  The first order of business was to have the various departments cease their outbound social media efforts sighting the proverbial need for a unified brand.  Unified brands are great and I understand the desire to reduce what could essentially be described as virtual noise however, by creating a unified voice you also run the risk of creating a very bland and vague voice.  My department, Support Services, has a very specific message tailored for a very specific technical minded audience where most of the marketing followers are more interested in products and promotions rather than support and services.
 
Getting to the point of the post, can the group possibly spend some time discussing how to create strategic plans for convincing Marketing departments that other groups within the organization require outbound channels as well?

Thanks in advance,

Steve Koven

Infrastructure & Technology Manager

International Game Technology