I’ve started a new series, called Social Media Frequently Asked Questions. It’s a collection of the top asked questions I hear over and over. I’m putting them here on my blog is a great place to help everyone quickly get educated, convince their boss, or be able to help their clients get over these hurdles, so please, pass them around.

If you’re seeking advanced topics, cruise through the web strategy posts (it goes back pages and pages)

Social Media FAQ #5: How Do I Talk to my Executives about Social Media?

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I enjoy feedback, but was surprised to see a few votes come into my uservoice page, one suggesting I help convince management on how to deal with social media.

Your job: To convince your peers, stakeholders and executives that don’t use social media (or don’t believe in) on why social media may be important to your business.

I’ve actually written about this before, so I’ll highlight some of the previous posts that I feel are helpful:

Start with Technographics
First, obtain the technographics of your market segment (we’ve made a sample free), if your customers are using social media tools, then you’ve a strong business case. Secondly, we’ve already concluded that decisions are based on trust, and trust is highest among peers, not from marketers. This disruptive change is enough to kick start the thinking gears of your executive.

Ascertain if this is right for your company
It’s important to note that social media may NOT be the best for your market or company, if the inactives are a significant amount of your technographics, or you’re in a very conservative industry, you may be ready to deploy a listening program, but may not want to participate. I really believe that social media isn’t for every company, and you’ll have to do an internal reality check to see if this is the case for you.

Focus on value, not technology
Next, don’t focus on tools, instead focus on the end result: value. How To: Effectively Talk to Execs and Clients about Social Media. This post teaches you how to talk about the end results of what’s expected, ever lead with “we want to start a blog”

Learn how to talk to immigrants about natives
Getting Your Digital Immigrant Executives to Understand the World of Digital NativesFrequently, the decision makers, are my parents age, and often their technographics usage is very low. I’ve found talking about Generation X and Y as the new workforce a quick way to open their eyes about the changes in communication.

Be prepared for the business questions
Lastly, before you go to your execs, be prepared to answer the tough questions, the one Legal, the CFO, the COO will ask. Be prepared.

Hope this is helpful, if you’ve other suggestions, please leave them below.

13 comments

I’m starting a new series, called Social Media Frequently Asked Questions. It’s a collection of the top asked questions I hear over and over. I’m putting them here on my blog is a great place to help everyone quickly get educated, convince their boss, or be able to help their clients get over these hurdles, so please, pass them around.

If you’re seeking advanced topics, cruise through the web strategy posts (it goes back pages and pages)

Social Media FAQ #4: How Do I Launch My Social Media Program?

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Companies unsure how to launch
Most companies are used to announcing products or initiatives using press releases, advertising, media influence, and even analyst influence. While many companies are toe dipping in the social media waters (The majority still have not, I’ve seen some adoption data from work) so there’s still many questions on what to do once you launch your blog, community site, podcast, etc.

Unlike Traditional Marketing
First of all, the term “launch” is the wrong way to think about this. Launch implies a single effort, getting a program in the air, and letting go, social media efforts are long term, and require a different approach, here’s how to approach it: think grassroots, not big bang.

The first thing to do is to remember this is unlike traditional marketing efforts. Remember that trust is highest between customers-to-prospect, not marketer-to-prospect. The next time you buy an item, think about who you trust more, a friend who has the product, or a marketer from that company. Therefore, the most effective way to announce your social media program is to get those in your community to announce it for you.

Tactics vary
In many cases, companies experiment internally with tools, and then launch a public social media program quietly, and let it build up momentum through natural word of mouth spread.

When a company wants to boost it’s presence, there’s quite a few ways to do this: 1) Link to the blogs, communities in your marketplace, add value from your own social media properties. 2) Join existing communities by leaving comments that add value, be an ongoing member of the community you’re trying to reach 3) For the sophisticated, provide special access to influencers in your market to announce, join, or co-create your social media programs.

Objectives
The goal for this exercise is simple, your employees, using social media tools, is to engage your community by interacting with them, being relevant, and adding valuable content to them (which is often, not marketing content) to your community. The objective is for them to respond to you, and sing your praises on your behalf. We’ll explore more advanced goals in future posts.

While I think good things are going to come out of ebay’s social media effort, to some, going the route of mainstream media to announce a groundswell effort seems counterintuitive.

9 comments

I’m starting a new series, called Social Media Frequently Asked Questions. It’s a collection of the top asked questions I hear over and over. I’m putting them here on my blog is a great place to help everyone quickly get educated, convince their boss, or be able to help their clients get over these hurdles, pass them around.

Social Media FAQ #3: How Do I Measure ROI?

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This question often creeps up at the end of a webinar or presentation that I give. While we often sing the goodness of social media tools, (and challenges) a web strategist will have to return to the workplace, and demonstrate to their management the value of any program –especially if it’s new.

Is it possible?
In 2005-2006 we debated if this was actually possible, the argument against the ROI of blogging was as difficult as measuring humans. In fact, until we can measure the impact of a conversation between an employee and a prospect at a coffee shop, it was difficult to measure social media. For me, that all changed when Charlene posted the ROI of GM’s Fastlane blog (this was long before I even thought about working with her).

What are you trying to accomplish?
Measuring “new” media isn’t as different as measuring “old” media, the trick is to figure out what your goal is first, is it to spread a message among a community? Is it to reduce support costs? Is it to learn from your community? In each of these cases you’ll have to then assign the right attributes to measure against.

New attributes for new tools
Next, you’ll need to realize that this new media actually has some new attributes (the limited page view attribute is no longer sufficient in this dimensional world), and there are some new attributes to think about (read the white paper I co-authored with Matt Toll of Dow Jones), such as authority, interaction, velocity, attention, sentiment, and actions. You’ll notice I left out the elusive engagement word, it’s used differently by everyone in the industry that it still hasn’t taken hold.

Benchmark
Lastly, you’ll benchmark your programs based upon your goals and those attributes, and you’ll come to some specifics. I’m actually leaving many, many steps out, but those are the high level tasks. You’ll likely need an expert, new tools, and probably a vendor (see my full list), doing it manually is very tedious.

More resources, posts, white papers, videos
Actually, nothing I’ve said here is new, I’ve written about it time (here’s a similar post with more detail) and time over, read all my posts tagged social media measurement.

Update: A few hours later I see this timely article from Computerworld on Life after page views: Web analytics 2.0

9 comments

I’m starting a new series, called Social Media Frequently Asked Questions. It’s a collection of the top asked questions I hear over and over. I’m putting them here on my blog is a great place to help everyone quickly get educated, convince their boss, or be able to help their clients get over these hurdles, pass them around.

Social Media FAQ #2: What does it mean to be Authentic, Transparent, or Human?

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First, understand the fear of most companies ‘hide’ behind their brand. This means that the collective of all employee contrabiutions are often behind the shield, crest, or banner of a symbol. This is nothing new and goes back to the most primitive of cultures where bands and fiefdoms would form –in nearly every culture.

Things are different now, the internet allows for real people to connect with other real people and have discussions about anything that interests them –void of any shield, crest, or banner. Well to be specific, some people start creating their own individual brands (we see this on many blogs), but it’s at the core individual level.

I’m often asked by clients (part of my role as an analyst is to answer social media questions in what we call ‘advisory sessions’) how far they need to take this notion of transparency. “Can I build a community but outsource moderation?” or “Can I write a team blog but have it created by corporate communications?” or “Can I create podcasts but repurpose brochure content?” The answer I give them for all is “yes, you can…but it won’t be living up to your full potential”.

What does Authentic, Transparent, or being Human look like?

Training and entrusting employees to build real relationships using these tools

Admitting when you’re wrong

Asking the community for help, working with the community to build better products

Showing your strengths –and weaknesses –in a public forum

Showing more of unique side of the employees (that you invested in) in addition to your products, technology, and services

Realizing the brand is actually owned by the community and not just the MarCom brand police

Sadly, in most cases, many brands will not go the full distance to show their transparency and humanside –despite that customers are doing this –and will continue to hide behind the crest. But for those that go the full distance and trust employees to build real human relationships, they won’t achieve their full potential.

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Now back to you all, I know there’s a lot of Social Media Strategists that are wrestling with this internally or working with a client: How do you advise your stakeholders to be Authentic, Transparent, or Human?

16 comments

I’m starting a new series, called Social Media Frequently Asked Questions. It’s a collection of the top asked questions I hear over and over. I’m putting them here on my blog is a great place to help everyone quickly get educated, convince their boss, or be able to help their clients get over these hurdles, pass them around.

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Social Media FAQ #1: What do I do if they leave negative comments on my site/blog/forum?

First, understand the fear of most marketing and corp comm teams, they want to show the company in it’s best light, having a mar on it’s brand is a nasty blemish that don’t want to see, in the past, a counter press release or sweeping the issue under the carpet was an option, but no more with the rise of social media. So how can you help these folks?

Well the truth of the matter is, they are going to leave negative comments about your company elsewhere on the web, there’s no way you’ll ever be able to stop this. If you delete or remove the comments from your own corporate websites, it will probably escalate in a ‘louder’ location in blogs and other forums, so don’t do that. The savvy strategist will realize that by bringing the problems and issues closer to home, you’ll actually have a few advantages:

1) You’re in the know. Being on home court gives you the ability to quickly find out issues, so why wait for them to bubble up elsewhere on the web, consider this a ‘free alerting system’ –embrace!

2) Involve them. Detractors come in many different flavors, but in most cases, these are individuals that want you to improve your product, so embrace them, acknowledge them, and get them involved in providing solutions. More often than not, after they see the effort you’ve got to help them, they could become and advocate and sing your praises.

3) An opportunity: By acknowledging and fixing these problems in public, you demonstrate confidence, openness to customer insight, and can turn this into a very positive experience.

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I’ve got tons of other answers, but I’d like to hear from you all, how do you respond to this frequently asked question? Great comments will be added to this list, and I’ll credit and link to you.

41 comments