Selling Social Media Into and Within the Enterprise

Making the Case: Selling Social Media Into and Within the Enterprise
Chris Heuer
Founder, Social Media Club
Creative Catalyst, AdHocnium

I love coming to talks like the one sponsored last week by the Social Media Club in Seattle. I learn a thing or two and have enough room to daydream into the problems I am presently trying to solve. In a separate file, I just jotted down three ideas I can use right away.

So this may come out a bit like rambling. These are my raw notes (I would have blogged live if there had been accessible Wi-Fi in the room).

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In order to help others understand the significance of social media, let your audience know: People like buying, but they don’t like being sold.

Figure out: who’s on the team, who’s on the opposing team, and who might be convinced ~ as Obama did, spend time on the undecideds.

The Web is a replacement activity more than a supplemental activity. Chris recently sent his newsletter to 3400 folks, got a 26% open rate and only 12 click throughs to the article he wanted to highlight. But when he tweeted the link, he got 1400 readers to the article.

What is the project? A grand vision for reinventing the company or a simple project to demonstrate value? He discussed @frank. A third of the room knew who he was. Frank started a Twitter account to handle Comcast issues. Has it solved all their problems? No. Has it helped improve their brand image? Absolutely.

The people he sees as the most successful are “in it” to build their career, build their reputations. They recognize that they can’t do it alone and are happy to be associated with the company and to help move the organization forward.

What can be measured? Are we blogging because we want to decrease customer support costs? Improve our NetPromoter Score? Ask, “How likely are you to recommend this product to a friend?” Take the risk. See what happens.

This is about co-creation, collaborate together; can’t do it alone. We are in the knowledge economy. Creating value is getting past our egos and focusing on our outcome together.

Conversational Research: setting up a few alerts and Twitter searches gives you an important first step in seeing what people are saying about the brand.

Come to me, let me give you something valuable as opposed to “talk to the hand:  here’s my thing, talk to it.”

The fear about knowing if the employee will say the right thing on a blog. Do you trust your employees? Is your hiring process strong enough to attract the right talent to serve this function?

The Clue Train Manifesto – the seminal work of our generation. “Markets are conversations.” All organizations used to be community service organizations: the butchers, blacksmiths, grocers, etc. A market is not just customer and prospect. It’s all the stakeholders who are interested in the same thing you are interested in.

Pew just came out with a study. Social technographics out of Forrester Research. That group is “joiners” – if we create a group, they will join it. Show the avatar, blog, is this person in our target?

VP of Disney: TV was Communications 1.0 – it was one way. In 2.0 we could hear back, 3.0 space where we can all talk together.

Readers, what are your successes

and obstacles getting your organization

to embrace social media?

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