social media masterclass part VIII

Posted on | July 2, 2010 |

migraine11 Bernadette Schwerdt interviewed me for the Better Business Social Media Small Business Masterclass, here’s Part VIII.

Question: How do I educate my management that we no longer can control the message and at the same time want to encourage consumer comment about our brand, products/services?

It’s not easy selling social media to senior management and don’t expect to do it in one meeting. You need to educate your teams about internal social media policy guidelines and social media marketing best practices. Do this in bite-sized pieces. Often showing what the competition is doing in social media helps to peak their interest. Then hold regular meetings to discuss the ethos of social media, how it is different from traditional media, is the organization’s culture one that fits social media – meaning open, honest, authentic, transparent? These are interesting conversations to have as they run to the heart of how an organization does business.

The first step is to listen by monitoring social buzz for conversations related to you and/or your category – this is an easy first step for senior management to buy into as it’s risk free. Then determine who is going to respond to those conversations and what the guidelines are around that, what is your Social Media Policy? If you don’t have a Social Media Policy, check out this database of 118 social media policies to get an idea of what needs to be covered. Keep your policy as simple as possible. Then how you are going to proactively set up your social media presence with blogs, Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, YouTube etc by writing a social media marketing strategy, plan and budget.

You will find you are continually educating and training your teams, including senior management as you travel your own social media marketing learning curve. Got other tips for this journey? Please share