Most corporate employees I talk to lately are dealing with one of three scenarios:
- They are trying to convince their managers that they need to be doing social media
- Their managers are on board with social media and are relying on them to put together a plan, they’re not sure how to put together
- Their managers are pushing a social media plan or tactic that the employee is not comfortable with
There are plenty of people talking/blogging about points one and two. I’ve even covered these topics before and they are probably worth addressing again, but not right now.
Right now I want to help those few people that are dealing with point three. Why? As more and more companies enter the social media space, more and more managers, with the best of intentions, will push misguided efforts.
First off we have to help you identify a misguided efforts. I must tell you at this point that if you are not active in social media, at least from the point where you’re reading blogs and books on the topic you’ll have a hard time answering these questions. Of course if that’s the case then you aren’t reading this blog anyway, so we’ll move on.
Ask yourself:
- Does this feel right?
- Is this transparent?
- Is this honest?
- Is it real?
- Will this achieve the goals management is expecting?
If you can’t answer all of those questions with a yes, then you have a potential problem. If you answer no to any of those questions you need to go do some research. You need some case studies, examples or at the least some good blog posts explaining why said tactic is wrong.
Where do you go to get these answers? This is where being active in social media pays off. Ask your Twitter followers. Ask a question on FriendFeed, LinkedIn or Facebook. I’ve done all of these and they all work great. You don’t have to give specifics or violate any company sharing policies but ask in generalities about the topic.
Now that you’ve armed yourself with reams of data showing why this is a bad idea, you need to make a convincing presentation not about what not to do and why, but what you should be doing and why. In your backup slides put your arguments why the other plan won’t work, but first try selling management on a better idea before you tell them their baby’s ugly.
What if you present your case and no one listens? What if it’s just plain wrong? You need to make a choice, and it can be a damn hard one to make.
Are you willing to ruin your reputation and the reputation of the company over this?
Don’t be afraid to phrase this to your management this way. I have and it worked.
What if you don’t come up with a good reason why not to do something? What if it’s not unethical, devious or even wrong? You need to ask yourself why are you uneasy with it? I’ve usually found that it’s because of one of three reasons (again with the threes):
- You’re not comfortable with how to pull it off
- You’re afraid that the tactic won’t deliver the ROI management is after
- You’re concerned about the motives behind the request
#1 fortunately there’s a relatively easy solution for this one. Get some help. Either through an agency, consultants, books and blogs or maybe there’s someone in your organization that has more experience than you. I can tell you that I have worked on more social media campaigns at HP for other department than I have my own. I see it as we’re all part of the same family and it gives me more experience.
#2 If management is hell bent on doing something you know won’t deliver the results then I recommend you temper expectations and move forward with it. This can be a scary proposition because no one want to be the sacrificial lamb. Cover your bases, document the process and your KPI’s and do what you can to pull it off.
#3 Why is management so determined to do this, even when everyone thinks it’s wrong? I’ve often found it’s because of ego.
We had a manager with a company blog who wanted to blog more frequently. The easy solution was to open the blog up as a group blog and get some regular internal contributors. He wouldn’t go for this. The compromise we eventually came up with was that we would get internal guest posters, but he insisted that each post have an intro written by him. This caused extra delays in posting and extra work on the teams part to coordinate. Yeah we were playing to his ego, but it’s his blog and he could do what he wanted.
Knowing when to trust your manager
Finally I’d like to address the hardest lesson for me to learn. Sometimes, your manager, who has no experience with social media, is going to be right and you’re going to be wrong. <cough><cough>
Your manager is *probably* a pretty smart person. They *probably* have a better understanding of the overall business than you do. They *probably* have years more general marketing experience than you do. They *probably* got to be where they are for a good reason. At some point you may have to trust them to make the call. And I’ve found that more often than not, things turn out alright. They may have turned out better (at least you think so).
If you do your homework, things will rarely turn out as bad as people sometimes imagine. We love to focus on the social media dissasters. In reality there are far more examples of successes out there than failures. Don’t let the bloggers and consultants preaching FUD get to you. Not every effort will be a homerun, but very few will be a dissaster.
Related articles by Zemanta
- 2009: Moving Beyond Social Media Whispers
- Blog 2.0 Realized
- This Means You (and me, too).
- “We Should Do Something In Social Media”
- Authentic Conversation - Real, Simple, Honest
- A Social Media Gut Check
Similar Posts:
- Walking the Razors Edge
- Old Media’s Dead. Why Should New Media be Afraid?
- Heading back to Vegas
# of Comments 7
# of Comments 1
# of Comments 4
