Pitching Social Media to Organizational Leaders: Crowdsourcing Solutions
Last week I played facilitator to a group of super-sharp social media professionals at the SoMeBizLife conference in Doylestown, PA (put together by Chuck Hall). This group helped me crowdsource some answers 
to tough social media questions like:
- How can we be sure a client is ready for social media?
- What are the common objections that we hear from organizational leaders?
- How can we demonstrate value in social media efforts in advance of a project?
- What kinds of expectations need to be set?
I’ve updated my presentation with a number of the deeper questions that the brain-trust came up with – as well as some of their solutions. Thanks to all of you who participated!
My favorite five takeaways (shown below) are all included in the SlideShare presentation on Pitching Social Media:
- Remember the ROI (Risk of Ignoring). Conversations happen with or without you. Do you want to be able to influence the conversation?
- Listen first. Start with listening. Discovering what people want and care about and how your competition is playing is a powerful and smart strategy.
- Integrate social into transaction points. Make it easy to leave testimonials or to tweet, as in “Hey! I just bought a cool supersonic widget from Widget Masters!”
- Help educate clients that costs and demands will change. I like to think of this as crawl-walk-run. The needs for a listening project are different from an engagement effort – and will change as engagement is progressively expanded and moved to internal team members.
- Use the marketing needs pyramid to determine if the basics are in place BEFORE a company contemplates a social media presence.
We don’t have to stop here though. Check out the full presentation and all of the other great ideas put together by this group. Please add your questions and ideas on pitching social to organizations in the comments below to continue the conversation.
Post by Skip Shuda, shown here doing some “deep listening” to his collaborators!
