Legal Research

Selling social media in your organisation

"Why don't they understand that social media can help us working more efficiently? Those stupid corporate drones! I want to get it more widespread in the organisation but every time I hit this frustrating wall!"

Getting users to understand how Social media tools can be used to improve their work processes and improving efficiency can at times be struggle. So it's great to see someone writing about on the Headshift blog as the author explains often when you reach the point where you have to "sell" social media within the organisation people start to crash and burn and all your efforts start crumbling around you. The author suggests that you need to tailor your pitch or how you sell social media to the individual:

"When you are selling Social Media or Enterprise 2.0 inside your organisation, it is very important to understand what kind of pitch you are doing. Are you going for a yes or are you avoiding a no? That choice will depend on your audience"

The author provides several suggestions on how to approach these pitches, for example when talking to the legal department:

"You don't need to convince the legal department how we can sell 40 % more or how we can achieve 20 % more efficiency. That is not their task. They are extremely good in protecting the company from lawsuits. So the approach to avoid a no here is to try to understand what keeps a corporate lawyer awake at night? Try to identify what potential legal risks a company has when adopting social software. Can they be sued by their employees? Can sensitive information leak to the public?"

There is some very good advice in this blog post, if you're looking for even more information on how to sell social media there is a link to an excellent blog post in one of the comments, called "Five elevator pitchers for Enterprise 2.0 adoption" the post gives example of individuals you will want to talk to and potential approaches.

Full post as published by LI Issues on March 29, 2010 (boomark / email).