One big hurdle stands in the way of B2B marketers ramping-up social media within their marketing mix: getting commitment internally to do the actual engaging. Stuart Morgan’s handy guide helps you handle the three main objections you are likely to come across
There’s no way round it: being effective in social media is largely reliant on your own people being active in social networks. This can be difficult because it usually needs volunteers from various areas of your business. And even willing participants may have issues with taking on extra responsibility. The three things people usually have a problem with are simple:
– Lack of time
– Lack of confidence
– Can’t see the point
You have a much higher chance of getting the buy-in you need for successful social media engagement if you take the right steps to overcome these barriers.
1. Make it easy for time-poor people
People really don’t think they have the time. But give them the tools and they will do the job. Start by finding them the right blogs, LinkedIn Groups and conversations to be in. Then keep feeding snippets of content and suggestions they can use, personalise or add to.
You can outsource the research by using an agency for social media monitoring, to do the ‘listening’ leg-work of finding key influencers, networks and individual conversations. Such research can be categorised into issues and business themes – and so give your engagers really tangible material to work with.
2. Watch your timings
Think about your own online social behaviour: chances are that you might spend only five minutes actually updating your own status and posts for every half-hour time you spend on social networks. So, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to ask people to spend about 20 minutes a day on average, if you give them one or two particular areas to focus on. These areas will allow your engagers to focus on what counts: sharing their expertise, not trying to find people to share with – and thus maximising the business benefit of their insight and enthusiasm. And when individuals become focused on particular groups that are right for them, their time spent participating will become increasingly effective.
3. Use confidence-building tactics
Encouragement and support are vital when you ask people to ‘go public’. Typically people want to know what the goal is, that there are guidelines to work to, and practical help on hand.
4. Mark out the pitch
Give people a good brief on your big picture: the themes and issues that connect the business with its audience, and the role social media plays in making that connection. Be clear about your aim – whether it is to generate leads, drive thought-leadership, gain customer insight and so on. This helps people understand what kind of questions and comments to post.
5. Hand out a handbook
Outline a clear and simple company policy on social media engagement. If you have an official policy, great, if not, there are some great examples out there. Include internal contact details like where to funnel leads or complaints, or who to go to for help. Sometimes they may have to handle sensitive issues, sometimes they may just want to make a YouTube video. Show engagers that you’re there for them.
Provide crib sheets of examples and etiquette that will help engagers feel confident at the coal-face. This might include a ‘good post/bad post’ comparison chart, a guide on how to tweet, and hints on starting effective discussions. Best of all, add very specific tips to your ongoing ‘listening’ research that will help them put together, in their own words, something highly topical and relevant to put out to the marketplace.
6. Show and share results
Let’s be honest, there are activities that seem a bit pointless if you don’t know the purpose, and can’t see the benefit. So, you need to do a bit of selling and a bit of recognition to keep your social media foot-soldiers marching to the marketing drum.
And it’s simple: just share the results internally. Social media offers tons of metrics – rise in followers/members, numbers of product guides downloaded, videos viewed, links shared and so on. Break these down by people or teams if you can, to make it more directly relevant to individual contributions – and highlight different conversation types so people can see the relative effectiveness of blogging versus tweeting versus group discussions.
Circulate social media measures that show improvement in the overall business position – such as increased share of voice, overall mentions, or improved sentiment.
7. Give a round of applause
Highlight good behaviours, recognise and reward star performers if you can. Because, if you show people the value to the business from the collective effort, you should find the job of convincing people becomes less of an issue all round.
