Convince me why I need social media

If you’re one of the fortunate ones whose company culture embraces transparency and honest communication, you’re a step ahead of the game. But if you’re starting from scratch, just where do you start?

1) Lose the Jargon

The term “social media” is intimidating to many who haven’t spent any time here. Words like blogging, Twitter, Facebook, community, and social networking are confusing and won’t help your cause.

So, focus on explaining social media tools in terms of what they actually do.Take blogging, for instance. How about describing it as a collection of discussions on your website that allow your readers to comment and respond?

2) Extend it beyong marketing.

A truly effective social media plan touches nearly every aspect of a business. And a big fear among companies adopting their first social media programs is that they’re going to have to reinvent wheel.

In reality, social media can enhance and expand your existing business functions, making them more effective.

Point out the benefits that can be realized in improved and more efficient customer service, or illustrate how you might gather product insights and improvements for your production group (like Dell did with IdeaStorm).

3) Listen and Benchmark.

Spend 30 days using and setting up listening posts. Set up Google Alerts and run Twitter Search queries for your company, relevant business and industry keywords, and the same for your competitors.

Map out your results, including quantitative (number of mentions) and qualitative (tone, sentiment, or “meatiness”) criteria. If neither you nor your competitors’ brands are being talked about online much yet, you can illustrate the opportunity to enter the conversation online and lead your industry. If you’re being mentioned but your competitors own a larger share of the conversation, time to look at leveling the playing field.

4) Clearly explain your goals.

There’s absolutely no way you can measure your success unless you set the goal first. Spend time to understand what you want out of social media (and never just jump into it because “everyone else is”). Do you want to improve customer retention or referrals? Decrease negative customer service feedback?

5) Steward the culture, not just the operations.

Social media is asking your business to look at their customer communications through a new lens.

As the champion for social media, understand the adjustments you’re asking your colleagues to make in their individual roles within the company. Realize that moving from controlled messaging to transparent communication is a difficult move for companies.

6) Demonstrate that it works.

Case studies, case studies, case studies. Peter Kim has a great big list of companies and their efforts to participate in this space.