It’s finally happened. After months of prodding, your skeptical boss has agreed to listen to your pleas for how your company should be blogging. She calls you into her office, and when you sit down, she asks pointedly “So, tell me why we should start a blog.”
You smile with pride and explain that “Blogging is a conversation, and right now we aren’t a part of it. We need to start a blog so we can join the conversation.”
The sudden frown on your boss’ face tells you that you just watched your company’s blogging strategy die a premature death.
Every week I talk to mid-level managers that are trying to sell their boss on using blogging and social media. Almost all of them talk about the importance of the conversation, of interaction, of being social. Anyone that’s read this blog knows that I am a champion of the ability of social media as a set of tools to build interaction and community.
But your skeptical boss isn’t. Your skeptical boss wants to know how blogging and social media is going to help them grow their business. They don’t care about ‘the conversation’ simply because they don’t understand how ‘the conversation’ is going to lead them to ‘the sale’.
And unfortunately, the office social media evangelist probably doesn’t understand that connection either. But if you want your boss to commit to using social media and/or launching a blog, you need to show them how their business will benefit from doing so.
Period.
Social media evangelists understand that a well-positioned blogging strategy can create interactions and community and a larger conversation around that company. But is that the end business goal of your blog? How does having more comments per post help you sell more stuff? How does more RTs from Twitter equal more widgets sold?
These are questions your boss will want to know, and IF you want the buy-in from them, you better have compelling answers. Often, we stop short in crafting our blog’s positioning. We think that we need more interaction, but once we have that increased interaction, we still need to build a bridge to the larger business goal for our blog.
Think of it this way; You have well-positioned/valuable blog, which leads to more interaction, which leads to X, which leads to more sales.
You need to determine what ‘X’ is. That is what your boss wants to hear about, not more interaction or more comments. If you can explain to your boss what ‘X’ is, and how more comments/interaction relates to and influences ‘X’ (which influences sales), then you’ll get your buy-in.
Then your boss will start to care about ‘the conversation’. But only if they understand how ‘the conversation’ relates to their larger business goals for their blog. Your boss probably understands ‘X’. So you need to sell your boss on ‘X’ as much if not moreso than ‘the conversation’.
So what the hell IS ‘X’? That’s the magic question, and it will be different for every business. And it will probably have more than one part. For example, I will soon be publishing an interview I did recently with a major company, and they explained how they evaluate their blogging efforts. In their case, they DO have their main blogging goal as being increasing interactions on their blog via more comments and more emails. But they set that as their main goal because they have seen from years of research that when there is more interaction on their blog, and more POSITIVE interactions with their readers, that they are more likely to create POSITIVE content about the brand, and that positive content shows up in Google search results, which makes a POSITIVE impression on customers that do Google searches for the company and its products.
So this company is fine with having more interactions on their blog be their main blogging goal, because they understand how more interactions leads to more sales. But the key is they set that as their main blogging goal after studying their efforts and how their customers are buying. Which is why meticulously studying your blogging efforts and tracking stats is a must, but that’s a post for another day.
For your company, your ‘X’ could be more traffic, it could be more links, it could be more traffic from the blog to your website, etc. But the odds are your boss understands ‘X’ a lot more than they do the importance of ‘the conversation’. If you want your boss to launch a blog, you need to show her how the blog will help her business. You need to understand what needs to happen AFTER ‘the conversation’ happens on your blog, and how that ultimately helps your business reach its larger business goals.
PS: If you have questions about selling your boss on social media (or need help in launching a social media strategy) and would rather email me your questions, contact me at mackDOTcollierATgmailDOTcom
Pic via Flickr user pjbeardsley
Is there any value whatsoever to my just dropping of an enormous “AMEN” to this comment section? Because I just did. 😀
Wow. I’ve read some fantastic posts today. I can’t emphasize how right you are Mack. At my first job out of college I failed miserably to gain any kind of buy in for blogging and social media. Why? Because I wasn’t savvy enough business wise to effectively articulate it. I’m still not quite there. But I’m learning everyday…it does help that I know how to get people to listen though.
.-= Stuart Foster´s last blog ..Why Exclusivity Rules =-.
There is a difference between the ephemeral understanding of ‘conversation’ and the hard data-based underside where most business decisions reside.
Great post.
Amen! 😉
I love the whole spiritual, tree hugging, come together & hold hands feelings that social media gives me…but I/we are not stupid…bottom line it sister! 🙂
If you can do that (which was done very well here, thank you) we will all be more successful as employees AND as consumers. Power to the people.
-jen
@jenharris09
I’ve seen the glazed eyes, the crossed arms and the furrowed brows of executives listening to fervent bloggers expound on the merits of their blogging efforts. The claims of readership levels, retweets and quantities of blog comments have absolutely no impact on executives whose primary focus is growing the business. In fact, these bloggers may actually be damaging their corporate standing by their inability to communicate effectively with the CEO in terms and language that he can understand.
Want to impress the CEO? Demonstrate the correlation between blog or Twitter interactions and sales volume. Show how customers that comment and exchange Tweets with your firm spend more per transaction. Reveal how customer service staffing levels can remain static while handling more service requests through Twitter. Demonstrate value. That will impress and convince.
Great stuff man. This is the single BIGGEST hurdle I have in selling social media to clients. ESPECIALLY business school clients. Thanks for the post, and looking forward to the interview.
Thanks guys for the great comments! One thing I have noticed is that the mid-level manager is probably going to mention ‘the conversation’ while the CEO is probably going to mention ‘bottom line’. It’s give and take, if you want the buy-in and can understand the boss’ POV, they’ll be more likely to listen to yours.
Mack – terrific post. Two hours ago, I blogged about the virtues of skepticism — fits perfectly!
Cheers.
Skepticism isn’t negative — http://www.communicationammo.com/2009/06/skepticism-isnt-negative/
.-= Sean Williams´s last blog ..Skepticism isn’t negative =-.
Hi Mack,
It is good to see folks starting to focus on the real issues as opposed to the Social Media hype, because at the end of the day, if you can’t answer your boss or your bosses boss Bottom Line questions, there will be no buy in.
For us, our goal was to raise our Google Ranking for our company with more Google Juice, which we achieved in pretty short order, albeit we are NOT SEO folks at all, but blogs really create a lot of rich content and opportunity for links.
But even when we share with other apartment executives about our success with a very tangible result, they are still reluctant. It is one tough sell, good luck to everyone trying to sell the top and don’t give up!
Eric I’m so glad you mentioned SEO benefits to your social media efforts (esp blogging). Those of you that are looking for another way to sell your boss on blogging, take notes; blogging improves your search results/presence organically. Most CEOs know jack about SEO, but they’ll sign off on the $10K a month (or more) bill to a firm for SEO work because they understand the importance of search engines and being ‘found’ by their customers.
And if you can do the same thing organically with a blog that your CEO is paying an SEO firm several thousand a month for, your chances of getting the buy-in on your blogging strategy just went WAY up. Case in point, I am a complete idiot when it comes to SEO, but The Viral Garden always has a Google Pagerank of 5 or 6, which is as good or better than most SEO experts’ websites.
This is an excellent blog and I really found this interesting to read. I recognised so much of this in our world – so thank you.
Coming from a PR angle, ‘brand effect’ + ROI is our permanent elephant in the room, and as an agency-bod who has done more than a couple of rounds in the ring I am often having to discuss such questions. These include: but what is the value? how much is this activity worth to me? what results will this bring?
In an ideal world it is great for metrics to include more than just units sold. They are of course The Bottom Line – but in order to get there, a strategic jigsaw involving the whole footprint of the business, its people, its stakeholders, its suppliers and its products is necessary.
The joy of online communications such as blogging is measureable, however it is worth remembering that people live online and offline, and are touched by many influencers. Therefore some things just can’t be measurable. It is worth remembering that just because it is online, the problem isn’t cracked.
We find that if additional metrics are included – as well as “how many units will I shift as a result of this blog” – these can help feed into the overall picture and future activity. These can include: how many conversations happened as a result of this post, how many blogs linked to it, which post generated most traffic, what words were searched on to reach the killer-post – and start reflect this analysis in the main website and general communications strategy, etc etc etc.
Yes the feel good factor is softer (fluffier) and harder to measure, but it still relevant and needs due consideration, as well as The Bottom Line (of course!).
PS: I totally agree with John Heaney’s comment too: we often use our own website / Twitter metrics to communicate the business reasons behind Twitter.
Although I always try to avoid a pile-on, I must say I am relieved there are a few pragmatic marketers left on the planet. So thank you. I am in a group called YPO with the former CEO of an FT 500 company, who recently agreed that marketing is the only dumb discipline that reports directly into the management committee. In other words, ‘joining the conversation’ is a good rationale and doing it is an acceptable metric. Marketers, wake up! The other business disciplines look at this activity and laugh or worse, roll their eyes. We spend our time enthralled with the latest shiny object and spitting hairs we forget the business enterprise is designed to make a sustained profit. Yes, customer engagement is key to that. Figure out what drives that, measure it using real numbers and put some strategic thought and discipline to your efforts…otherwise get used to sitting at the ‘kiddie-table’.
Great discussion, Mack. And good timing with the release of MarketingSherpa’s article, “Measure the Impact of Blogger Outreach: 9 Key Metrics.” (Just as a point of disclosure, I don’t have any affiliation with MarketingSherpa.) I agree with you that each company or organization will measure different things, but it helps to start somewhere.
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=31281
Thanks for saying this, Mack. This reinforces what Shel Holtz and Shashi Bellamkonda touched on at BlogPotomac, and it’s a point that I think is way overdue. Conversations, communities, engagement — the guys that write the checks JUST. DON’T. CARE.
What baffles me is that we (the social media evangelists) have spoken in those vague and utopian terms for so long. There’s a psychologist in me trying to diagnose why we’ve refused to talk about social media in the language of business leaders.
OK Quiz.
How many have read the Cluetrain?
Of you that have – how many understand what a conversation is?
I see…
Everyone uses the word conversation, but until you understand The Cluetrain it is simply a word.
Read it. be good for ya.
http://www.thecluetrain.com
Mose a couple of thoughts:
1 – I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve read The Cluetrain Manifesto. I think the ideas encapsulated in the book are fantastic, and very smart. However, the authors take a decidedly anti-marketing slant to the subject, and I think that turns off a lot of people that read the book. The ideas in the book are strong enough to stand on their own without the soapboxing that the authors seem to engage in quite often.
2 – If a boss is skeptical about an idea, it’s tough to win them over to that idea by telling them how wrong they are. When you approach your boss about social media and use terms he doesn’t want to hear, he’s going to tune your message out. If his business can ultimately benefit from social media, it just makes sense to show him how in terms HE gets, not necessarily terms YOU get.
Better to show him what’s RIGHT about the idea, instead of what’s WRONG with his thinking.
Sorry haste makes waste …
http://www.cluetrain.com
Mack, thanks for your comment on Mandy’s post, how I’ve missed subscribing to your blog I have no idea but I am now!
One of my clients took a baby step in understanding social media when I connected the dots between prospects (business owners targeted by his sales team) interacting with his brand online, and having that brand reinforced with the press releases dropping in those markets. CEOs still very much understand Sales/Marketing 101: Top of Mind Awareness.
.-= Marivic Valencia´s last blog ..Immediate Response Required! =-.
There is a subtle but important difference between working to “help your boss understand the conversations” and “learning to make the conversation work for the good of the business” The latter is very important. The former is not very useful.
The real key is that the person who is in charge of the social media conversation at a company uses that channel to forward the company goals. Its not about making the boss understand how to make the conversation better by including your business in it.
.-= Mike Evans´s last blog ..Stand on principle; Swim on style =-.
Excellently well pointed out, Mack. I can’t even remember the number of times I had this kind of confrontations with people ranging from corporates to small time clients to simple friends. It all comes down to laying down clear pros and advantages relevant to person you want to convince.
.-= Tibi Puiu´s last blog ..Blogging in a Twitter World: Is There Any Room For Both? =-.
I worked for a company that was on the leadin/bleedin edge of selling ecommerce software a decade ago and hear the echoes of those who thought selling stuff on line made no sense. I would suggest you present your company/industry stats on customer retention and use this as the initial goal of the “conversation.”
This is a great post – I can’t believe I missed it when you published it.
This has helped clarify something that has been on my mind for a while!
Cheers!
David
.-= David Holliday´s last blog ..Blog of the Week – Global Patriot =-.
You nailed it on the head Mack. It’s like all things digital – you have to take a lot of time to explain it, and it’s always been that way (why should we do a Web site? Why should we do paid search? Why should we create a microsite? etc. etc.)
We don’t have to explain advertising, even if the boss doesn’t know what X is there either. They understand how an ad works (and you can show it to them in context!).
From an utterly simplistic standpoint, the best reason I’ve found to start taking about why is the huge benefit in organic search that blogs supply. It’s a way of reaching people through keywords you’d never have on your corporate site. This is always one of the first points I make, and since the bosses finally understand this (after all, they all use Google) it opens the door to the next X.
And personally, if it weren’t for my blog, then no one would have ever found me Googling “Moms want gigalos” 😉
.-= Rich Nadworny´s last blog ..The End of the Beginning for Twitter? =-.
That concept Steve mentioned, “customer engagement,” is the flashlight shining down the rabbit hole, I think. Our selling of the concept of blogging – and microblogging – can evolve quite productively around that engaged customer every business lives and dies by. Engaging the customers has never really even been possible before. And corporate execs don’t want to hear “never even been possible before…” just another way it can’t be measured, they figure. My job is different, I have to reach the near-illiterate and wave the appropriate words in front of them (which does not include “Twitter,” “blogging,” or “social media,”) and then, once I have their attention, begin to reveal how vital these tools are to their immediate future as Interested Earth Citizen. If they really are asleep, and have no compulsion to know anything or grow anything or discovery anything inner or outer, then they don’t belong in my classes. If they have any ambition whatsoever, I can make the connection between their desires and the need for modern communication skills.
Thanks for the …. conversation.
Suzanna Stinnett
.-= Suzanna Stinnett´s last blog ..Why I love the Google Profile =-.
I love these hard hitting topics, Mack! It’s great that you’re digging into the core of what social media has to battle for: corporate buy-in. The quickest way to win is to make it easy for the CEO to understand. If it’s clear how efforts going in will translate into a valuable output, they’ll have trouble saying no.