Although social media is becoming a hotter topic for more and more divisions within any enterprise, for many business groups the concept of monitoring, analyzing, or engaging on social media content is still a vague and sketchy sounding proposition. So how do you promote its use without just stating a bunch of boring facts that would lull even the most caffeinated into a comatose state?
Here are some fun ways that you might bridge the knowledge gap around social media business uses:
1. Host a Social Media Panel
This is a little more involved, but bringing in a handful of experts who will speak to a particular audience interest around social media can create stimulating conversation and generate powerful momentum.
2. Schedule Social Media Brown Bags
This is show-and-tell time! Show the audience how you use social media–what tool(s) you utilize, the general workflow for monitoring or engaging on content, and reports that provide you with actionable business insights. Tell them compelling stories about how other companies have solved similar problems using social media intelligence.
3. Create a Social Media Task Force
Check around – there are probably numerous employees who love social media and would be happy to dedicate a couple of hours a week to brainstorming ways that social media can be better utilized or normalized within the company. They might even tweet out what a cool company they work for!
4. Flaunt your Social Media Successes
I heard a great story from one of our clients the other day that the social media insights they get from Visible Technologies enabled them to predict the outcome of a biannual survey they send to their customers! That prediction let them get a head start on building programs to address the pain points that the survey later confirmed; this made the C-levels very happy. Our client now uses the story of their success to sell the idea of monitoring social media to other business groups at their company.
5. Sponsor a Social Media Trivia Contest
If you’ve got a little budget (for a fun prize like a cookie basket) and some creativity, you could use your company’s employee newsletter or other forum for announcing a playful trivia contest. A trivia contest could involve five social media multiple choice questions and the one who gets the most right answers wins (be sure to reserve a tougher question for a tie-breaker). Questions should make participants work a little, be enjoyable, and teach them about social media—for example, ‘How many Twitter followers does Charlie Sheen have?’ or ‘If Facebook were a country, where would it fall on the number of the World’s largest countries?’ See the Social Media Revolution on YouTube for ideas!
Quick Tip: To ensure success, decide what type of event will be most effective after you’ve identified:
- Your desired outcomes (why are you hosting and what do you want to achieve?)
- What will motivate your audience to attend or participate
- Who your audience is (what social media experience they have, the business groups or professions they represent, etc.)
And if you have some other fun, creative ways you’ve been socializing social media within your organization, please let us know!
