This is a guest post from Emanuele Breccia, social media manager for Entertainment Fusion Group, CEO and founder of Breccia Social Media Consulting and a public relations graduate student at New York University. Read his tweets at @Emanuele227, @EFGpr and @EFGPRNY.
Breccia
You got hired as a social media manager, but you’re still struggling against top management’s resistance to social media. Regardless of its importance, some executives still don’t quite get it. Your efforts to launch a social media campaign with adequate support seem vain when faced with no dedicated budget and no support from the C-suite. Worse, you’re asked the ROI of your campaign without having tools to measure it.
Frustrating? Incredibly, but don’t despair. Getting executive buy-in for your social media campaign is hard, but not impossible. Here are five tips that will help:
Drop the lingo. Speaking the same language is the first requisite when communicating with another individual. How are you going to get social media budget approval if the C-level can’t understand what you’re saying? Stop talking about organic reach, Twitter sentiment, amplification and impact. Translate your social media terms into business terms commonly understood by executives.
Align social media goals with business goals. Is the goal of your campaign an increase in amplification by your key influencers? Great, but this is a fluffy goal to executives. Focus on grounded business objectives that are easy to execute and measure. Is your company’s objective to increase sales? Develop a social strategy in line with that objective and track all sales that are directly related to your social media efforts. Providing your managers with ROI affecting the business plan-at-large will give you credibility and justify future investments.
Do more with less. You look at the social media campaign successes of Oreo, Old Spice or KLM and think, “If only I had their budget…” Wrong! Sure, these companies’ budgets factor into success, but there are plenty of companies with low budgets achieving outstanding results. Get creative! Nowadays, there are a million photo- and video-editing apps. (Have you heard of Snapseed?) There are also excellent sources of content like Quora or Digg. These social bookmarking sites can assist you in finding, storing and delivering engaging content. Show top management you can do more with less and they will dedicate more money to your campaign when they see results.
Provide training. Come up with a short and simple training plan for your executives. Take initiative and host a social media event in your conference room. Your executives will get a chance to understand how social media is going to impact their company by increasing sales, customer satisfaction and goodwill. Once they get the “why” of your social media efforts, they will definitely get on board with your social media initiatives.
Measure, measure, measure. Measurement is paramount in every business initiative and social media should be treated as one. Executives analyze measurement reports almost daily and I can guarantee that when they see a well put-together report they will be impressed and give you more credibility. Employ measurement to benchmark activities in line with already established business goals. Don’t get too specific, though—C-level executives may be relatively new to social media, so provide them with bite-size reports that are easily “digestible”.
What do you think? What would you do differently? Emanuele would love to hear comments, questions and opinions on the matter.
If you need more tips on convincing the C-suite, join Cision’s own Dave Byman and Laurie Mahoney for a free 60-minute webinar, Making the Business Case for PR Tools, at 2 p.m. Eastern on July 11.
