Six ideas to win executive sponsorship for your social media effort
May 22nd
One of the most difficult problems in the social media world is getting the boss to understand and support an initial effort.
Executive sponsorship is a vital topic. If you are not being supported by your boss and you hope to pressure him/her into supporting your nascent social media initiative through a “grassroots” effort, it’s not going to work. Not in the long run. For effective, lasting organizational change to occur, it must be supported from the top. How do you gain that support when your boss doesn’t get it?
Who is the “sponsor” of your social media effort?
Let’s be clear about the term “sponsor.” The person who controls the budget and job assignments of the people working on social media is the “sponsor,” in our definition. This may not necessarily be your boss. It might be your boss’s boss or even the head of the company. When winning support for your project, be clear on who the real decision maker is!
Here are six ideas to get the boss on-board:
Conduct a “pilot” program. One of the most effective ways to get something started is to propose a temporary project. For example, go to your boss and tell her you want to try a new idea for 12 weeks (which sounds shorter than 3 months!). Explain that you will do this as an added, incremental effort that will not interfere with your normal job duties, you will measure and re-evaluate at the end of the period, and together you’ll decide whether to continue or not. Once the effort gets going and gains momentum, it’s going to be difficult to stop unless you completely blow it. So don’t blow it. : )
The small victory strategy. Here’s another simple idea that is remarkably effective: Plan your social media pilot program around easy “small victories” (SV). An example: “By week one, we want to have 100 followers, by week two we want to have 25 mentions, etc.” Notice how different this is compared to “we want to increase our customer satisfaction rate 28% by 2012.” SV’s allow you to announce lots of happy news when you need it most — at the BEGINNING! People will get behind a winner. Establish a culture of support and enthusiasm by building easy wins into the program and promoting those SV’s every week!
Money really does talk. Whatever you do, don’t go into a meeting with a company executive explaining that you want sponsorship to measure your company’s “quality of conversations.” Present the opportunity in the language of the company. If a priority is brand awareness, or customer service, present the opportunity in those same terms. Remember that any activity in an organization SOMEHOW must relate back to money, whether it’s profits, donors, or funding. Social media is no different. Be prepared to explain how your initiative ties to the company’s objectives. If you can’t, you’re not ready for this discussion.
Patient education. Your boss probably truly wants to do the right thing for the company … if they understand what to do. So many times before jumping into an initiative, you need to patiently, relentlessly educate your sponsor on the truths of social media. If your executive sponsor doesn’t “get it,” begin sending regular links to articles that explain why social media is relevant to your business. Bring in guest speakers. Maybe get them to attend a conference. Follow up. Discuss. Repeat as needed.
Preach fear in the morning and redemption in the afternoon. Scare ‘em. Seriously. Let’s be honest — Fear is a great motivator: Fear of what the competition is doing, fear of being left behind, fear of missing a trend, fear of making a wrong decision. There is often a significant first-mover advantage in the social media space. So if the competition is gaining ground, or customers are dialing you up on the social media “phone,” they really need to pay attention.
Plan for problems. When implementing change in an organization, it’s important to have a counter-measure for every obstacle you’re likely to face. Literally write down every possible argument and reason people will argue against your social media proposal and then formulate a reasonable counter measure to address them. And the hurdles aren’t just money and resources. It could be politics and competing priorities. Get your supporters to help you think-through effective answers to anything your boss can throw at you and be well-prepared.
If your boss is intelligent and well-meaning, eventually they should come around. If they are not intelligent and well meaning, getting them to understand social media is probably the least of your problems!
What problems are you having with sponsorship and how are you addressing them?
Lessons from a horrible social media strategy
May 20th
Last week a bizarre decision by the prestigious Mayo Clinic had my college class rumbling with outrage.
One of the most popular class exercises I use to demonstrate the importance of blogging and content strategy is dividing the class up to dissect and discuss various corporate blogs. Since the pharmaceutical and health care industries are so prominent in New Jersey, I often use the Mayo Clinic’s blog as a case study.
The Mayo Clinic generally does a good job using its blog to establish a voice of authority for its principle core disciplines of stress management, cancer treatment and other health categories. They have doctors providing regular columns on these subjects and they attract a lot of comments (although they generally do not respond to the comments, probably for legal reasons). I like using this blog as an example because in an industry that is so gun-shy about using social media, this prominent clinic seemed to be moving forward in a powerful way.
A strategy gone horribly wrong
Last year I noticed they started taking paid advertising on their blog, mostly from drug companies. I thought this was a strange decision. Clearly the goal of the blog was to establish community contact and voice of authority. Why cheapen the outstanding reputation of the clinic through annoying advertising that pushed drugs on people?
The strategy completely blew up on the medical center last week when my class discovered that right next to a blog post about the grief of pregnancy loss, the clinic was displaying ads for cute children’s clothing. Look carefully at the picture at the top of the blog post. Utterly tasteless. Incomprehensible.
Of course I don’t think anybody mindfully placed this exact ad in this exact place. I’m sure they had a deal with this advertiser to automatically rotate ads for cute clothes on a column about pregnancy, never thinking it could backfire like this. Only problem is, the mothers reading the blog don’t know that. They trust Mayo Clinic. Why wouldn’t they?
Here is a word I rarely use on my my blog: Stupid. But I think it is an unavoidable description when an organization sells the soul of their brand for a few advertising dollars with a mindless strategy of advertising children’s clothes to women who have just lost their child.
Lessons learned?
Here is the lesson to take out of this disaster. Everything you do, and everything you don’t do, communicates about your brand. Once you have your brand strategy set, protect it fiercely and stick to it relentlessly. Never, ever take your eye off of what you do and why you exist.
In this case, somebody in the Mayo Clinic PR Department got some very bad advice. Maybe they were wide-eyed about the prospect of turning their customer-facing communications into a profit center. But what they really did was turn the clinic’s stellar reputation as a premier international healthcare center into a shuckster ready turn to tricks in any tasteless manner for a few bucks. Instead of passionately and sensitively helping people who are suffering, they are shilling baby clothes and drugs to them, This proud institution totally lost their vision of why they exist.
Think about what you’re doing with your marketing strategy. Is every activity lined up in a way that relentlessly communicates your core values and brand promise?
Conspiracy Theory. A {growtoon}.
May 18th
Join the growtoonists each Friday for a humorous take on marketing, social media, and current business events.
Joey Strawn is a social media strategist that loves enjoying a good book and then drawing in it. Check him out on Twitter: @joey_strawn
Following your passion – Easier said than done
May 17th
A guest post from {grow} community member Jeremy Floyd
From Donald Trump to Oprah Winfrey, the “secret” to success seems always to be “follow your passion.” I get lost with this directive. To me, it’s akin to telling someone to embrace their “freedom.” Okay, what the hell am I supposed to do with that?
Passion is a loaded term. That soup of spiritual, emotional, mental, physical/social longing, and satisfaction each have unique ingredients. The challenge is to bring alignment that satisfies all elements of your person. I’ve found myself chasing mental “passion” only to drain all energy from my physical body and vice versa.
So what’s alignment? Most of us have spent much of our lives with the question, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” The real question is WHY do you want to be when you grow up? Below the surface of the what is a reason that drives you. The alignment of the why, how, and what are the critical recipe to figuring out the “passion” question.
Simon Sinek does a nice job of explaining the approach of the what versus the why by illustrating the Golden Circle. (If you haven’t seen his TED talk check it out.)
When I was 15, my deepest longing was to direct movies. I spent years in the theatre trying my hand at acting, directing, and a ton of time in the technical production. Other masters came into my life, and in the pursuit of their satisfaction I quashed the dream. At 27, I thought my passion was to be a lawyer. But I focused on the “what” of being a lawyer – power, money and success – rather than the “why,” which is helping people. I went down a ridiculously difficult road to discover the inside of the “what” was different than the outside of the “why.”
So, how do you get to the true heart of your passion?
- Remove the “whats.” We spend a great deal of time in our culture driving to the features of our lives: what clothes we wear to work; what car we will drive; what kind of house we’ll live in. etc. These are all results, or features, and they cannot drive the decision.
- What is the problem in the world that gets you excited? After years of searching, I believe that people and organizations are uniquely situated to be incredible, but they don’t always discern their path to excellence.
- What can you do better than anyone else to solve that problem? In marketing terms, what is the “point of differentiation?” For me, I believe that by spending time with people and organizations, listening to them, and bringing into focus the “thing” that really drives them, I am helping to unleash potential.
- There lies the WHY. Why? That is the real center, isn’t it? My purpose or WHY statement is to unleash potential. The purpose should be boiled down to one or two words and be very simple.
- How do you do it? The how is the bridge from the why to the what. It becomes the rules or framework that directs the purpose into the action.
- Finally, what’s the what? At this point it is easier to determine what you can do, but more importantly it determines what you can’t do. The realm of opportunity is limited by the answers to the preceding questions. So, it is easy for me to say based on my purpose and promises that I would not, for example, be satisfied as a scientist working in a lab all day because I would not be unleashing the potential of people.
One day while wandering, I came across three bricklayers. I asked the first bricklayer what he was doing.
“Laying bricks,” he told me.
I asked the second what he was doing.
“Making a brick wall,” he told me.
I asked the third.
“Building a cathedral,” he explained.
Once you’ve identified the purpose, every action that you make in your life has greater meaning and significance. Suddenly, there is alignment between your actions and your goals.
And only then, I would say, you can truly be passionate.
I know this is a very different perspective. How does it land on you?
Jeremy Floyd, President of Bluegill Creative, facilitates corporate and board retreats to help organizations discover their reason for being. He also posts about marketing and digital media on his blog.
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Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you’re here.
-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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