Bloghound

Looking back on conversations with hundreds of marketing and communications people this past year, it’s clear that a great majority understand the value of social media for marketing. Yet two things stand in the way of implementing social marketing programs: senior management resistance and an intimidation about not having the right skills.

The first issue is the most formidable and surprisingly widespread, even among executives of organizations that are innovative and creative in other ways. The desire for message control and fear of putting a company “out there” without being able to control what might be said is a much greater deterrent than I would have imagined had I not heard so many people express frustration and ask how to overcome this problem.

There’s no simple solution, but here are some suggestions.

1. Start small, quiet and don’t call what you’re doing social media, Web 2.0 or any of the phrases associated with losing control. For example: have just a few knowledgeable, articulate people in the company regularly read and respond to posts on blogs that are highly relevant to your industry. Or, start a podcast or videocast series, but call it an interview program for your Web site, interviewing customers, analysts, industry opinion leaders, your most interesting executives. After you gain success metrics, let the boss know that this is, in fact, social marketing.

2. Host a thought leadership community, with editorially independent bloggers who are influential in your industry. This gives your company a seat at the industry conversation, requires little time from your staff, and no executives need to blog. Our firm is managing several of these for large companies, such as FastForward for Fast and Mobile Messaging 2.0 for Airwide, to great benefit for the sponsoring companies.

3. Show the value to search. If you don’t have content, people can’t find you. Or you pay big bucks for paid search program.s Done right, social media programs up your Google rank and decrease paid search costs, a concept that is appealing to most execs.

4. Link to the strategic innovation and customer agendas. Many companies rank innovation and/or customer retention/loyalty as strategic priorities. If this is the case in your organization, link marketing innovations to the larger innovation agenda, or show how social networking can be a way to glean insights for the company’s innovation efforts. Similarly associate a new two-way direct customer communication channel within the customer loyalty strategic context.

5. Watch your competitors, and share what they are doing with your sr. management team. Competitor envy is a great way to get buy-in to change.

6. Have an answer to “how do we measure this?” It’s surprising how even the soft measures – visitors, page views, registrations for “special content,” downloads of e-Books, search rank elevation – will satisfy a skeptical exec. (Of course, there are ways to also measure lead gen, PR and other “traditional” marketing tactics with social media, but that’s another post.)

7. Do a weekly email digest of the most relevant blog posts in your industry for your boss and other execs. Better yet, send it to everyone in the company and your customers with some top-level analysis. Few people have time to keep up with industry information; this is a great service and is another way to educate your boss about the value of social media; it’s not just some blog hackers, but thoughtful, insightful writers/podcasters as interesting and well-informed as traditional journalists.

8. Create a private online community of customers and prospects. The “private” part is especially appealing to those fearful of public, open discussions. Better yet the insights from these communities are proving more valuable than any other customer research approach. Listen in to some podcasts with execs at HP, Cox and the National Cancer Caregivers Network over at Communispace to learn more.

9. The 6-month test request: Suggest that you do a six-month “test” of a particularly appealing, moderately budgeted social networking idea, and assess the results at the end of that time period. If it’s working, your boss agrees to continue and up the funding. If it flops, you all will have learned valuable lessons. (Then make sure you’re embarking on an idea that will deliver the intended results. Hint: a company blog is usually a bad first foray into social marketing.)

10. Stay grounded and don’t get infatuated. In discussing new approaches, stay as rational as possible and acknowledge that social marketing isn’t the be all and end all. This will reassure your boss, validate his/her beliefs, and open the way to have a conversation about getting started.

Keep in mind that the goal is to get started, not to convert senior management. And the ideas and content matter more than the tools and technology.

Hope these help. If anyone has other tips that have helped overcome the obstacles to social marketing, please share.

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