You’re probably the most passionate person in your company when it comes to social media. When it comes to explaining this to your senior leadership, a different approach is required. They’re busy. They have other concerns. They might not be as studied up on the tools as you. Here are some suggestions.
Get on the Right Side of the Fence
- Start strong. When you get the chance to talk to the senior team about why social media tools are right for improving your company’s business communications, be clear and put together a brief overview of what you want to do and why. “I’m thinking that a blog will improve our marketing efforts and overall SEO. I’ve built a plan that shows rough costs, time involvement, and my predictions of what we’ll get for our efforts.”
Can you imagine the response you’ll get for that?
- Explain things from the senior view. Look at this from the whole business perspective, and couch your requests that way. Make sure you’re focused on what the company’s benefits are, and not so much on the tech, how cool it is, and why Oprah joined Twitter.
- Use case studies. Need some to start with? Here, take mine. Find the ones that best align with what you want to do, and/or that best match your company’s verticals. Case studies are nature’s way of saying, “Hey, here’s an ass-covering for you.”
- Find and keep a senior sponsor for the project. Depending on your organization, this makes or breaks the project. Luckily, it seems that most senior teams come equipped with one savvy person who actually knows what you’re talking about, but who hadn’t thought of seriously engaging in the process at work. Use that relationship to leverage and keep support.
- It’s not about the tech. Make sure your presentation and efforts are business focused. This is what kills most projects. However, as a paradox, be clear that this won’t consume the tech team very much. The impact to infrastructure and bandwidth are minimal (depending on what you plan to do) and you will work with the appropriate IT people to build the right security measures and informational policies to manage things.
Beyond that, it’s just a matter of finding the right opportunity to recommend that your company is ready to play in the game. It might mean finding your top competitor already using the tools, but hey, that’s won several social media enthusiasts the chance to get things going.
Join me today for a free webinar with Hubspot on the topic at 3PM ET, and if you’re really interested in learning more, come to the Inbound Marketing Summit on April 28-29th in San Francisco, to meet with me and several dozen others who can better equip you to make the case.
Photo credit ScottieT812