14 Quick Tactics to Encourage Corporate Social Media Adoption

Posted on February 5, 2010 by marc meyer

This past Tuesday on our weekly Hashtag socialmedia tweetchat, we were honored to have one of the classiest people I’ve gotten to know, host our chat, BL Ochman. To say that it was a successful tweetchat is an understatement, but what really pushed the chat over the top was the last question in which she asked for quick tactics to encourage corporate social media adoption.

BL recounted the raw responses on her blog post, but I wanted to clean them up a little bit, make them into complete sentences, add some clarity and lastly point attendees from Social Fresh to this page.

What’s great about this list? What we have here is the full circle of social media; crowdsourcing, participation, sharing and invaluable input from peers, consultants and practitioners of what works-all for the benefit of quick internal corporate adoption.

Note: I’m also including hyperlinks to sites that add more value to how and what you will do with these tactics. Make sure you open them.

1) Create a Social Media case study of who is talking about your company both in good & bad ways. Show the benefits of why you need to join in.

2) Demonstrate for corporate executives the increase in visibility from search rankings that result from searchable presence on social media sites

3) On-going social media education! By providing weekly Twitter tips via email you can share best use, reports, case studies, trends, etc to show that it’s not intimidating.

4) Show corporate management stats on issues where competitors used social media & they did not. It’s a very clear way to demonstrate value.

5) Teach your execs and colleagues how to follow conferences and events and comment via hashtags

6) Encourage your employees to follow your company via social media tools and platforms like Twitter and retweet, post, etc. Be part of the conversation. stress to them that it also helps employee engagement.

7) Create a hashtag around your company, product, or industry and drive the conversations.

8. Map and find out where your target audience is participating in social media. Where are the conversations? Find them.

9) A first step for company enthusiasm could be to use social media to help build community within the company – HR bonding.

10) Show corporate executives how social media tools like wikis and internal communities, can help increase productivity. not all SM is external.

11) Show management what your competitors are doing in social media and those results.

12) Set up real time keyword/product/industry monitoring engines and show them the results.

13) To prove to executives of the value of social media, I like taking 12-18 month stock chart of competitors using Social media and showing them their results matched against it.

14) Building a business case for a new marketing initiative begins with research: customers, competitors, industry leaders> benchmarking

Even if you take one of these and put it to use, you are or will start to build a case for internal social media adoption. The key is showing them the results. And remember, it happens with or without your company. It’s your choice.

Engagement by proxy

Posted on February 3, 2010 by marc meyer

I was looking at the definition of proxy for some odd reason the other day and I was struck by the irony of the definition.

Last week, Todd Defren, who is taking a unique approach towards the social media space by discussing the ethical side of engagement, blogged about ghost tweeting and ghost blogging. Essentially asking his readers to determine whether doing either or not doing them, had any ethical merits.

But I have news for Todd and everyone else. Ghost blogging and ghost tweeting happen a lot. A lot more than people will care to admit. It happens because people that write and talk and engage for a living are a lot better at it than people who don’t do it for a living. And those that don’t, would rather leave it to those that do. Though I applaud him for taking the high ground on this issue, Todd knows it’s a lot more prevalent than most will admit. So do I.

Is there a solution, I don’t know. There might be, but it has to meet the criteria of the agency and the expectations of the client. Good luck with that.

Engagement by proxy.

This weeks #SocialMedia Tweetchat Topic: Fear Factor: Understanding the Value of Adding Social Media to the Mix

Posted on February 2, 2010 by marc meyer

FUD FUD! (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt) is typically used by sales and marketing types to position themselves against competitors. IBM used to be renown for using this tactic and now it’s being used in a different way. Executives are turning FUD around and using it on their own organizations with regards to the use of social media. While companies widely accept that social media is transforming the business landscape, executives are still reluctant to approve anything more than small tests or pilot programs.

This reluctance by executives is being translated by many to simply infer that they are scared. Looking at it from an executive point of view however might shed a different light on the use of social media. Companies have spent decades building out their networks of consumers, partners, suppliers, employees, and special interests. So why does management shudder whenever you begin to put a “social” in front of the network? Consider, today’s business models are developed with layers of hierarchy and managed very linearly. By this, I refer to the typical order of developing product, inserting the supply chain, managing distribution, creating point of sale campaigns and attracting consumers. There is a very linear process for managing corporate messaging, customer service, measuring consumer sentiment, channel partner alignment and so on. What social media does is dis-intermediates most linear processes and connects disparate networks in ways that enterprises have not yet created “management” solutions for. Like the classic management book implies, we have moved the proverbial manager’s cheese. So what does this mean to social media champions inside companies?

In order to make decisions, executives need clear objectives, relative impact on short term and long term business and data points to back it all up…not theory. Introducing a company’s employees to be social is one way to start (a good post by Rachael Happewill help identify ways to get started). This helps to build confidence, trust and develop skills for those tactical purposes. What is still missing though is the bigger issues surrounding change management and working procedurally in a non-linear environment. For instance, at its most basic, what happens when corporate messaging is spread by consumer reviews not Corp Comms department? What happens when consumers demand (or request) product features instead of market research? Take it a step further now and consider what might happen if your consumers could connect directly with your suppliers and eliminate your company’s role in assembly? Now it moves beyond ratty little conversationalists to a complete dis-intermediation of non-essential middlemen and your company is no longer relevant (think newspaper business).

In order for companies to consider adopting social across an enterprise, social media strategists need to move beyond campaigns and tactics and begin considering corporate lineages. A research study commissioned by Cisco contained keen observations for agencies and strategists to consider.

“Only one in seven of the companies that participated in the research noted a formal process associated with adopting consumer-based social networking tools for business purposes, indicating that the potential risks associated with these tools in the enterprise are either overlooked or not well understood.”

This is only one of the findings that was pointed out. The entire excerpt was reported by CNN Money here.

How do we ease executive’s minds and begin socially infusing companies? Our moderator this week is tasked with helping connect those dots. Helping us out this week, B.L. Ochman will provide her years of insight and success at convincing executives to get past dipping their toes in the water. Our topic and questions follow:

Topic: Fear Factor: Understanding the Value of Adding Social Media to the Mix

Q1) Why do executives still doubt social media?

Q2) Do companies have time for social media?

Q3) Are there quick tactics that can be used to build company enthusiasm around SMM?

The twitter based chat will take place on Tuesday 02/02/2010 at noon EST. To participate follow #sm45 on your favorite Twitter client or on our live site.

via hashtagsocialmedia.com

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