Amber Naslund shares some very valuable information:
Brand Elevation Through Social Media and Social Business | Altitude Branding
Be courageous. Pick up the phone, or fire up the email, and ask for 15 minutes of time from the people that can help move social media forward in your organization (or at least reduce some of the friction around it). That means the marketing folks, the customer service folks, finance, HR, PR, product management, QA, sales. Yes, that includes the people you’ve never talked to before, and the ones that aren’t in your “box”.
Ask them one or two questions that can help you form a business case for social media. Your goal is to align social’s capabilities with the problems your organization needs or wants to solve for their own business. Note that the questions below aren’t all specific to social media; they’re attempting to uncover some of the underlying culture, brand, and operational issues that social media could help address. Remember, we’re talking culture change as well as operational change. You need to be the one to translate.
1. What do we do and why, in your words (not a vision statement)? On what could we, as a business, spend more time, energy, and focus?
2. Are you passionate about your role? If so, why? If not, what would help you be?
3. What goals do you have for your role this year? How do you hope to impact the success of your department? The company?
4. How would you describe the culture of our organization?
5. How do you use the internet in your work life? In your personal life? Where are the overlaps?
6. How do you believe your team uses the internet for their work? Have you heard ideas or feedback for ways they’d like to use it more or differently to do their jobs better?
7. Where do you turn when seeking resources or information about your role? Our company? Our industry?
Read them all!
Amber’s blog and her contribution to social media is forever an inspiration. She’s a true thought leader and someone we’re proud to have as part of our community.
Thank you, Amber for getting us all thinking. Here are my thoughts one just one of your questions:
A vision statement is internal and best kept formed in the head and heart of the leaders who plan the strategy. It’s informed by the talent and needs of the group, the people they serve, and conditions of the environment. It takes advantage of the unique qualities and skills that the group brings to market and is always changing to meet the customers where they are.
These are great questions and help reinforce the notion that in order to be successful and get buy-in, you need to have a good understanding of an organization’s culture and business issues. If you can demonstrate that, and show how social media can be used to advance an organization’s agenda, it’s easy to get buy-in. And as you say, the questions are applicable to a range of disciplines. Thanks for your post.