Fighting resistance within the company against social media, suggestions needed?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Tom Haser on October 14, 2010 at 10:43am

The YouTube video would not convince the kinds of people you are talking about -- primarily because it's all consumer stuff on the Internet and they wlll not see the connection to the company and the customer. So I'd recommend not using it in the meeting; rather, consider it a pre-meeting enticement where you talk about what does all this mean for your company. In a meeting, you'd be much better off showing what customers are already doing in this space -- there are tons of examples in the defense area such as MilSuite, Intellipedia, DoDTechipedia, etc.

I work at Lockheed Martin so I have a pretty good idea of the challenge you are facing. We started implementing social media inside our company over 4 years ago (we have made incredible progress, but there is always resistence). You want to show how social media can beneft the company internally as well as with customers. If by any chance you or a colleague is attending the Industrial Research Institute Member Summit in Chicago Oct 26-28, I'll be doing a presentation on lessons learned in implementing social media inside a large enterprise. Good luck. http://www.iriweb.org/Main/Events/Member_Summit/Public_Site/Navigat...

Permalink Reply by Julia Gregory on October 14, 2010 at 10:43am

Lara,
there is actually a more recent version of that video and I agree that it is very powerful, I have used it several times when presenting to folks about social media. If you go to the creators blog post and get the current version, there is also all the resources listed that he used to compile his video. Lots of good links and explanations about the video that moves through the stats very quickly.

http://socialnomics.net/2010/05/05/social-media-revolution-2-refresh/

Permalink Reply by Angela Sanchez on October 14, 2010 at 10:50am

I tend to agree with Tom. The stats are impressive, but your audience will want to see how social media can directly benefit them and your particular target market. And if the people you're presenting to are an older demographic, they might be turned off by the speed of the graphics and the background music. Better to pull the stats and use them in your own presentation.

Permalink Reply by Amy Adams on October 14, 2010 at 11:30am

I agree with Tom. The video is great, but it doesn't speak to how social media can be useful to a company. Most of the resistance I've gotten has been by people who believe those statistics, but see social media as a cool toy for kids, or a way to exchange grandkid pictures with old high school friends. Your task is to sell the technology as a useful way of talking about your organization.

I think a great approach would be to show the video, but immediately follow it up with clear examples of successes from other companies or agencies. Then you'll need to set clear goals for a social media campaign so that people understand that it's not just fun and games -- it's part of a clear strategy to engage (or educate, or whatever it is your organization hopes to achieve).

Permalink Reply by Chris.Bohemier@gov.mb.ca on October 14, 2010 at 11:38am

Hi Lara,
I have had the same battle in my jurisdiction. I have found that education went a long way. I think videos like this are useful to help get a few points across, but you will need a bit more information fro a group like that. What I found that really worked for me was finding examples of similar organizations using social media. I work for a provincial government in Canada (equivalent to the State level in US) and education of key decision makers was key in reducing the barriers to getting access (we are close to unblocking it government wide - a few weeks away).

Another great argument I found was showing them that people were already talking about government, and we were missing out on taking part in the conversation. I did simple google searches of "negative" things and positive things to show people that thousands of conversations were taking place with or without our knowledge. I have uploaded a presentation i have done in the past. Feel free to pick pieces from there you find useful.

Drop me a line if you have any questions.

chris.bohemier@gov.mb.ca

Good luck!

Chris

Attachments:

• Social Media 2010-05-31.ppt, 16 MB

Permalink Reply by Loulia Miller on October 14, 2010 at 11:42am

A good way to approach a reluctant audience is to make them understand that the conversation about your brand/industry is already happening whether you're part of the social network or not. People are talking about you whether you like it or not, which leaves you with two choices:
- ignore it
- participate

The cost of ignoring can be very high for a brand. Here are some examples:

1- Dooce and the Maytag adventure (where Maytag took a beating and other appliance brands got to play the nice guys): http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/02/twitter-dooce-maytag-markets-equit...

2- BP and the twitter impostors: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/05/bpglobalpr.html

And there are more.

Would be nice to do a search for your brand on either Twitter or Facebook and show them what's happening (if there's anything).
You could also show them examples of your competitors and industry partners' profile pages.

One last thing: policy. A lot of people resist social media because they fear all employees will be online messing with the brand image and being unproductive. Drafting a social media policy that addresses these issues is not only a must, it will also help you make them feel more in control.

Permalink Reply by Faye Newsham on October 14, 2010 at 12:04pm

Laura;

Once you locate the more recent video recommended above, I would show it (perhaps without the music for more staid audiences) and then follow it with the credentials of the author and his book and some slides of your own that might speak to how this directly impacts your business model or needs.

http://socialnomics.net/about/ - for information about the author.

Permalink Reply by Jim Kovach on October 15, 2010 at 9:37am

Agree- gotta be Mission related. You might refer to A-Space http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-Space
or AKO/milBook as examples.

Permalink Reply by Lara Coffee on October 15, 2010 at 9:39am

Thank you everyone for providing some excellent feedback. The examples are excellent.

Permalink Reply by Sean McBride on October 21, 2010 at 2:26pm

All these things are great. One thing that really put my leadership at ease was me creating an official social media policy that laid out the types of things that would be posted, but more importantly, that I was the only one posting them. I established a POC team from each division that would send me information when they thought it was something that was relevant for our social media sites, but we always used my voice and I was the deciding factor as to what was posted and how it was posted. It really put leadership at ease knowing that I would be filtering information and not just putting out anything.

Permalink Reply by Amy Adams on October 21, 2010 at 2:31pm

It might also be helpful to show your leadership the kinds of metrics that are available through most social media tools. You aren't just throwing stuff out into the void. You have great tools for watching how many people are finding the information interesting, and how many people are engaging with you. Social media became cool within my organization after I gave a brownbag lunch showing the kinds of metrics I had at my disposal.

Permalink Reply by David Phillips on November 12, 2010 at 10:03pm

Lara, Social Media has come a long way in the last three years but some of the fear of privacy violations and retributions from emotional inputs exist and in some publicized instanced have substantiated these fears. If you include applications like Wikipedia, blogs, and sites like Govloop have been adapted by even the most conservative and paranoid of agencies

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