Comments on: Is your company really ready to start leveraging social media?

By: Comet Branding Radio: How to Talk to Your Boss About Social Media | Comet Branding Blog - Progressive Milwaukee-based Branding, PR and Social Media Agency

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:22:34 +0000

[...] You can read the posts here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and the Prequel. [...]

By: Sara Meaney

Sara Meaney — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:51:05 +0000

RIck, thanks for your comments. I’d LOVE to hear about the information you’ve collected over the past 6 months. Keep us posted when you’re ready to share!

By: Rick Friesen

Rick Friesen — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:45:06 +0000

Wow! I love this list — great insight. Great comments too.

I think there should be more talk, studies, etc an how to teach the old dogs new tricks part. And I don’t just mean case studies and a couple of graphs…

I have been collecting information for 6 months. Now how to synthesize into a single, cohesive “plan”…

Thanks again!

By: Sara Meaney

Sara Meaney — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:06:38 +0000

Thanks for your comments, Barry. Couldn’t agree more. The social media space is getting crowded quickly and only time will tell who will survive. The winners in the space will be the ones who are best able to adapt to change, adopt new tactics as they emerge and acknowledge that being an expert requires more than just saying you are one. Thanks for the great resources.

By: Barry Hurd

Barry Hurd — Wed, 20 May 2009 05:49:13 +0000

Great set of questions. As an consulting group we’ve been seeing a lot more businesses who are completely unprepared for the reality of connecting everything with social media.

The first statement is “but isn’t it free?”

My follow-up answer to that statement has been “Sure its free. Most stuff on the web is free. In fact HTML is free. Why did you pay $250k for an HTML site again?”

As decision makers begin wrapping more and more brain power around the channel as a whole, I’m sure we will see more and more of them coming to the realization that talent (in any industry) is at a premium.

By: Sara Meaney

Sara Meaney — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:29:26 +0000

Thanks for your comment. I agree with your comment however I believe that some old dogs CAN be taught new tricks and it’s worth trying to convince them. Some executives just need a lot of proof and comfort before they’ll venture into new territory. It’s that conservative approach that has made them successful in business- but not always. An internal example of social media might be the example they need in order to understand the nature and speed of social media.

By: Stuart Foster

Stuart Foster — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:18:07 +0000

Do you have the necessary internal management buy-in for the real-time, person-to-person interactions required in social media?

If you can’t do this: Don’t even start. You need to have people who can actually handle interactions on the fly (and without approval) from 15 managers. The world online just can’t work that way. To try and do so=Fail.