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Seven arguments to coax your boss to use social media
By Sara Meaney

Providing the proper professional context will bolster your bid to make a splash in the networking pool

When preparing to talk about a social media strategy for your organization, think about things from your boss’s perspective. What outcomes would make him or her look like a rock star? Focus on addressing those. It will take some effort to create a case for your specific organization, but it will pay off.

Keep this equation in mind: Little Money + Low Boss Time Commitment + High Return on Investment = Good Place to Start.

Here are several strategic points to consider when building your case:

1. Focus on the strategic reasons why to use social media instead of the tactical how to use it. It’s easy to get sucked into how to use Twitter, for example, but that isn’t going to help your strategic argument. Schedule another time to give a how tutorial.

2. Research the demographics and user trends of the social media channels you intend to recommend. Show your boss user demographics that will appeal to your company’s needs.

3. Determine who is talking about your company or product in the social media space along with where, when, and why the conversations are happening. If you can demonstrate the conversation is happening without you, it strengthens your plea to get involved.

4. If no one appears to be talking about you, but they’re talking about your competitors, the same argument applies. It’s also possible that your industry or product doesn’t yet have an active community online, possibly because it doesn’t yet have a host or a home. You can be the first to give it to them. Game on.

5. Show how your competitors use social media successfully. That will increase the importance of the discussion quickly. Build an arsenal of examples of well-done Facebook pages, Twitter personae, and brands in your space that are leading the way. Just make sure you’ve thought about what you might do to differentiate from and/or improve upon what’s there.

6. Tie the strategy to the business objectives of your department and company. Demonstrate the anticipated tangible business outcomes your boss can expect from a successful effort—and how you’ll report on them.
Show the correlation between the effort and cost associated with engaging in building a social media presence and community with your brand or product in a measurable way: number of new business leads, increased Web traffic, measurable uptick in brand awareness in target demographic, improved search engine rankings, trackability of click-throughs, and so on.

7.  Discuss the timeline to the payoff. It helps if your boss knows how long he or she has to wait before claiming responsibility for your brilliance.

Sara Meaney is a Partner/Left Brain with Comet Branding. www.cometbranding.com