The Social Media Marketer

5 Ways To Get Your Boss On Board With Social Media

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Sometimes, social media marketing blogs like this one are just more of preaching to the choir.

After all, we all know how social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter and all the rest, are important tools in building a company's success. So we pass back and forth all those terms like SEO, pay-per-click, matrices and the other techie words, and crunch numbers like they're big bowls of popcorn.

But at the end of the day, who really stands to benefit most from the use of social media marketing? I mean, we can talk all we want amongst ourselves, but are we really reaching the people who need this stuff most – business executives?

In most cases, we're probably not. Don't believe it? Try this simple little test. Go look for your boss' username, or the company you work for, on Twitter.

Does the company have a lot of followers, or only a few? And how often are they tweeting status updates – or responding to others? Are they giving links back to their own websites, and are they recommending others?

Of course, your boss is not always going to be sitting there tweeting away like Lindsay Lohan after getting out of jail. But the fact remains, there are still business leaders who are blissfully unaware of what social media can do for their companies.

It's up to you, as a social media marketing expert, to get business owners and leaders to see the difference between using social media effectively and viewing social media as just another way their employees are wasting their time.

To do that, you have to think like a business executive. And what are business executives most interested in?

It's all about the bottom line.

They won't care about how many “friends” they have on Facebook unless those friends are all ready to spend some money.

So here are some ideas for convincing your boss, and other business officials just like him or her, how using social media will benefit the company.

1. How much is this going to cost me? Theoretically, it doesn't cost anything to start a Twitter or Facebook page, or for that matter to post videos on You Tube. However, realistically, there's more to establishing a social media presence than just creating a page. For a business to be successful on social media, it's best to either assign someone to maintain the pages, hire a new person to do it, or pay a company or person who specializes in it. So, when that business executive asks you how much it will cost, be prepared with numbers in your hand. If you're going to provide the services yourself, give your rates or those of someone who will be available to provide services.
2. How much will I make? You should be able to show how a company's online presence has impacted the sales and revenues of businesses similar to theirs.
3. Talk to them in language they understand. Business executives don't want to hear about how many tweets and retweets something gets. They want to know how that traffic will result in customers and business. So if you can explain to them that 1,000 followers on a Twitter site could result in at least 100 customers clicking through and buying something from that company's website, then you might just sell them on the idea.
4. Be realistic going in. It sounds well and good to say that a Facebook account will help a website gain traffic, but businesses make money from being realistic. Just because someone friends you on Facebook does not mean that they're going to click on through and buy your product, or come out and go shopping in your store.
5. Show the business owner how h/she can promote the business' products on those nice new sites that have been created. Having a sale? It's a lot quicker to send out a tweet or Facebook status message than it is to go to your local newspaper or television station, take out an ad and wait for a day or two for it to appear.  With an online presence through Facebook or other sites, a business' specials, sales and features can be made public within seconds.

Remember, when trying to convince an executive how using social media will benefit that person's company, it's all about product and solution. You have product you're trying to sell, and it's up to you to show how that product will be the solution to many of that executive's concerns.