Sep
26
How to convince Management to use Social Media
September 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Social Media is still a new concept to many companies and there are still many people not convinced that it can work for them. Then there are companies that have embraced it and management are enthusiastic and totally into Social Media. This article is aimed at people who have discovered social media and believe that it can work for their company, but their management are either less than enthusiastic or perhaps almost in the dark about social media.
The first and probably the most important thing to be able to convince management that social media is for your business is for you to believe that it will work. If you don’t believe it – they won’t believe it! Once you have this you then need to prepare your case.
First off you need to have a plan and understand what it is you want to achieve with Social Media. Just approaching management with a we should use it – will probably get you no where.
Once you have an idea and plan the best place to start is your own market/industry. Start with your main competitors and see whether they are using social media and how. Search for success stories on companies in your market/industry or vertical markets/industries. If you can’t find any for your specific market/industry you may have to go outside – there are many success stories around. Find some that are using Social Media in the same way you have in mind. Perhaps you will even get some new ideas that could work for you.
Search for internet statistics to back up your case. Internet World Stats is a good place to start. It is important though that the facts you quote should be relevant to your case.
Now you have your plan, you have some facts, you have some examples you need to show management what it would mean to the bottom line. Now this is still a new area and as with any new business venture the bottom line is a calculated estimate. Some of your ideas may not even have anything to do with the bottom line. These are usually measured by KPI’s.
The best way to approach this is to look at the measurements that are considered critical by management and establish whether you could measure the same things for your social media initiative and how that could be done. There are new tools coming into the market all the time and companies focusing on benchmarking, search around and see if any are relevant. You may have to see whether the results of your social media can be integrated into your current measurement system. You could find that initially it may have to be manual. The most important thing is that you have a solution and have considered how to measure performance.
The last thing to tie up your case is to outline how you would implement this plan and the timelines involved.
To improve your chances of a success make sure the presentation is professional and to the point.
Once you have a solid case it is time to present it to management. Good Luck!
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