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HOW TO Sell Social Media to Cynics, Skeptics & Luddites – Tips, Resources & Advice – UPDATED

January 19th, 2009 by Robin Broitman

HOW TO Sell Social Media to Cynics, Skeptics & Luddites - Tips, Resources & AdviceTrying to make the case to someone on the benefits of using social media? Maybe a boss or a client or a co-worker who’s a little resistant? Maybe a lot resistant?

Here’s an arsenal of articles with solid advice, data, and tips to help you think through your sales strategy and put together some convincing arguments.

If You Read This, Please Tweet This To Your Followers (just copy and paste the following into your Twitter bar):  HOW TO Sell Social Media to Cynics, Skeptics & Luddites  http://tinyurl.com/92ocoy

  • Get On the Right Side of the Fence (NEW)
    From Chris Brogan: Stellar advice and suggestions for explaining the benefits of social media to your senior leadership.  You can also view a free webinar from Chris and Hubspot ”How to Demonstrate the Value of Social Media to Your Boss”
  • 8 Tips for Selling Social Marketing to CFOs
    From Decker marketing: At some point, you’ll probably have to sell social media to your finance department. Culled from answers to a question posted on LinkedIn, this article provides 8 tips for justifying social media marketing programs to your finance people. From being prepared to provide hard numbers (e.g. ROI) to emphasizing the low capital expenditure of social media programs — this article provides helpful tips.
  • Selling Social Media “Up” to Management
    From Pistachio: Advice on how to convince your management that social media can provide value to your organization. One piece of advice: Step off your enthusiasm about how “cool” all this stuff is and cut straight to the value. Also reviews five likely objections (budget, audience size, loss of control, priorities and uncertainty) and ways you can address them.
  • How To Champion Social Media At Work
    From Social Media Explorer: If it seems the people you work with think using Twitter or Facebook is simply “playing” here are 6 steps to becoming a social media champion at work –from making sure you operate within your companies rules to targeting the right co-workers to help you in your efforts.
  • Twelve Ways to Sell Social Media to Your Boss | chrisbrogan.com
    From Chris Brogan: 12 ideas to help you convince your boss that social media has value for your business from pointing out that social media can help with customer retention to showing that social media can help your business differentiate itself & establish thought leadership in your industry.
  • Ten Common Objections to Social Media Adoption and How You Can Respond – ReadWriteWeb
    From Read Write Web: An excellent article that list each of the top 10 common objections to new online tools and provides advice on what you can say in response to each of them. From I suffer from information load already to I don’t have the time to contribute and moderate.
  • The Importance of Social Media Marketing: Why You Should Learn and Master it
    From DoshDosh: Discussion of the benefits that social media marketing can provide to your business. This definitely will help you craft a persuasive pitch.
  • Top 10 Reasons Brands should Listen to Social Media
    From Power Shift – Social Media Blog: There are a multitude of reasons for paying attention to what’s being said in social media. This article lists the top ten which include uncovering complaints so you can remedy them and identifying customers who praise your products so you can use these as testimonials.

  • 5 Ways to Sell Social Media to Your Boss
    From Read Write Web: Suggestions on ways other companies have used social media tools that you can use to sell social media to your boss. One way other marketers have benefited from social media: Social media gives marketers the chance to give quick feedback and break down unnecessary walls.
  • 9 Reasons You Need Social Media Marketing in 2009
    From Stuntdubl: Offers up advice on how to pitch social media marketing internally in 6 easy steps along with 9 reasons you NEED social media marketing in 2009. One key reason: No matter how non-technical your customers are – social media impacts their consumption decisions.
  • 21 Ways to Share the Social Media Love
    From Altitude Branding: The first step in convincing someone about social media is making sure they understand it. This article reviews 21 things to do share what you know about social media with others — business or individual. If you want to increase your own confidence in social media try our post 100+ Resources to Boost Your Social Media Savvy.
  • Overcoming corporate resistance to social media
    From Social Media: Links to 4 good articles with advice on dealing with specific excuses you may encounter for not using social media such as no corporate budget for social media, no one to monitor the social media, not being able to control social media, etc.
  • Secret Guide to Social Media in Large Organizations
    From Colin Mckay of Canuckflack: A handy little guide for exploring the world of social media and building support for social media in a large organization. Presents a range of guerrilla tactics from operating as a cell to marshalling external support to sneaking social media over the fence.
  • When The Boss Fears Social Media
    From Brazen Careerist: Advice on what to do if you have a boss that doesn’t get the whole social media thing or has concerns ranging from fear of the unknown to discomfort with customers being a too candid to hesitancy about something whose ROI can’t be easily measured.
  • How to Sell the Value of Social Media To Your Boss
    From Influential Marketing Blog: To help you convince the people you need to convince to do more with social media, here are the five core arguments you’ll need to make, as well as a method for how to back up each with examples. One such argument- demonstrate that people are talking about your company or your industry by noting the number of blogs or conversations listed and having those numbers ready to share.
  • How to sell social media to your boss
    From eBizz by Chris Salazar: More ideas on things you’ll want to do if you have a boss who can’t yet see or appreciate the potential value of social media. One idea: illustrating how your company can benefit from the “human” contact that social media facilitates.
  • How to Get Your Organization to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog
    From Social Media @ Work: A rundown on some of the objections you might encounter within your organization and how to deal with them head on.  One possible objection:  Won’t this take our employees away from more important work?
  • How to Measure your Social Media Program
    From Web Strategy by Jeremiah: Excellent discussion of how to measure the success of your social media program and how to use these metrics to sell the value of social media to others.
  • 20 Reasons Why You Cannot Ignore Social Media
    From Kyle Lacy: Culled from the Wave.3 Presentation from Universal McCann, key facts relating to the power of social media that you can use to demonstrate it’s importance to others.
  • Social Media Will Change Your Business
    From Business Week: Discussion of why businesses need to be involved in social media. Their bottom line advice: catch up….or catch you later.
  • Making a Case for Social Media Marketing
    From Wild Apricot Blog: Advice for non-profits but helpful for anyone looking for reasons their organization should get into social media marketing – discusses what is this thing called “social media” and why should your organization get into it. Also includes a link to a helpful resource – an ROI calculator for social networking campaigns from Frogloop to help stimulate thinking about how to measure the success of social media programs.
  • Data: What are the Benefits of Social Media Marketing?
    From Mashable: Looking to make the case for why your organization or clients should be using social media marketing? A recent survey outlines the benefits that marketing executives cite as reasons to embrace the medium.
  • Social Media ROI—What’s the ‘Return on Ignoring’? : MarketingProfs Articles
    From MarketingProfs: Different take on ROI for social media, providing perspective on what is the Return on Ignoring social media.
  • The Limitations of Social Media From Logtrenpreneur: Social media sites can be a tremendous source of exposure and they’ll help you to build links and indirectly search engine traffic, but the visitors you will get from social media marketing will have some limitations that you’ll need to be prepared for when you put your case together.
  • Why does your boss hate social media?
    From Tangyslice: Some reasons your boss may resist your social media pitch.
  • How to Find Statistics on Social Media
    From Mashable: Great article by Aaron Uhrmacher discussing how to find and use statistics on social media to convey the value of corporate social media participation.
  • Video- How Do I Explain to My Boss the Value of Social Media
    During the keynote presentation kicking off the Inbound Marketing Summit – David Meerman Scott – author of New Rules of Marketing & PR was asked the ultimate question during the Q&A session – How do I explain to my boss the value to letting go of control and engaging my customers in a more intimate and public forum?
  • Consumers Want Businesses on Social Networks
    From Marketing Pilgrim: Discussion of the 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study showing that most consumers think businesses should interact with consumers, Good statistics for your arsenal.
  • The Top Ten Reasons for Building an Online Community in 2009
    From Vovici: If you don’t currently have an online community, and you are not thinking of building an online community next year, you should be- this articles lists 10 reasons why you be. One reason: an opportunity to generate tons of new ideas as Starbucks and Dell have done with their efforts in social media.
  • Online Communities and Their Impact on Business: Ignore at Your Own Peril
    From Rubicon Consulting: Review of research done by the firm that provides data supporting the value of online community to businesses. A PDF of the report is available for download.
  • 20 Reasons Small Businesses should be Using Social Media
    From Blissfully Domestic: List of benefits for a business in using social media – mainly targeted at women who are small business owners but useful ideas for others as well. Establishing yourself as an expert, increasing linkability, and expanded global reach are just a few.
  • How to Measure Social Media ROI for Business
    From Mashable: Understanding how to think through ROI issues will be critical if you want to sell social media. This article will help you get a handle on options for measuring social media ROI – both qualitatively and quantitatively.
  • A Framework For Measuring Social Media
    • From Peter Kim, a nice framework for measuring social media success that you can use to help to shape your ROI arguments. Peter discusses four common factors that can quantify social media success: Attention, Participation, Authority, and Influence.

Need more  information on Social Media Metrics?

See our Social Media Metrics Superlist, a collection of articles, resources, tools and advice on measurement, monitoring, ROI and statistics related to Social Media.

Need some case studies or examples for your pitch?

If you haven’t already done so, take a look at our Superlist of What Not To Do in Social Media. In this article, you’ll find examples of companies who ignored social media and suffered because of it. Another great resource is our Social Media Case Studies Superlist. In it, you’ll find tons of examples of companies who are using social media and benefiting from it. You can use these examples in your pitch. Any more ideas? Any success stories in selling social media to your organization or boss? Share them in the comments below!

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