When you’re trying to make the case for social media inside your company, it’s not just your bosses you have to convince. Management matters, but often times, your colleagues and co-workers need some education, too.

Especially if you’re planning long term and expecting that social media will become part of your business model, not just a channel (and I sure hope you are), you’re going to need the help and involvement from the people around you, and outside of your department.

Getting their commitment and building their enthusiasm is key. It’s not just about a mandate. It’s about helping them understand what social media is, how it works, and why it can help them do their jobs better.

Communication

Good internal communication is really hard. But it’s critical for ANY larger scale initiative to succeed, but especially for something that may be as unfamiliar as social media.

Designate point people on your social media team to act as information stewards. They should be folks with good relationships throughout your organization, and they need to connect with point people in other departments that may be affected – now or later – by social media endeavors.

Ask them to keep these folks posted on a regular basis about your plans and initiatives – both the ones being implemented for sure, and the ones you’re tossing around. Ask for their feedback. Let them air their interest and concerns, and ask lots of questions. Put the responses somewhere for everyone to find and see. That can be a weekly email update, a Google Doc that all can access, your corporate intranet, a wiki, whatever works for you.

People are remarkably comforted by the availability of information, even if they don’t always use it.

Training

Please, please spend the time educating your teams as you go along. You don’t have to have it all perfect (and you probably never will). But be willing to SHARE how you do what you do, down to the details. It’s surprising how enlightening it can be for people to understand what you do by seeing it in action. And if you want people to adopt social media as part of their business practices, you need to make them comfortable with it.

Simple is okay, too. Some ideas:

  • Setting up social media profiles
  • Social media culture and philosophies (the fluffy stuff, yes, but still important)
  • Engaging 101: What to say, when to say it, and what to avoid
  • What to listen for and why, relative to their jobs
  • Case studies on social media gone right (or wrong), and how that relates to your work
  • Real examples of how they can be using social media in their focus area (customer service, business development/sales, HR, internal communications, product management, etc.)
  • Measuring social media – what you track, why, and how

Spend an hour over lunch. Order pizza. Skip the PowerPoints. Have a practical discussion that’s open to lots of dialogue, questions, and airing of concerns or doubts. Ask them what THEY want to learn about (versus what you think you need to teach). Training is as much about asking and answering practical, real questions as it is about lecturing.

Empowerment

If you’re opening lines of communication and training folks to get them immersed in social media, you have to let them do it. And they need to believe that you trust their judgment as professionals and colleagues to do it well.

Not everyone is going to do things the way YOU would do them personally. Mistakes will be made, and there will be plenty of learning opportunities for how to do something different or better.

Your feedback should be as much on the side of encouragement and positivity as it is about criticism or pointing out mistakes. Social media is still a BIG area of discomfort and misunderstanding for people, especially those who didn’t come up through their professional careers with digital media at the center. And it’s intimidating as all get out for some. Not everyone gets this naturally.

Being a good steward of social media internally means being coach, cheerleader, and psychologist as well as teacher and expert. It means speaking in plain English, not jargon and buzzwords and kumbaya, and putting things in business perspective for the people you’re talking to. Think practical.

Remember that this is a culture shift. It’s not just about the what and how. Be a resource to your teams as much as you can while they get acclimated.

Don’t Be A Perfectionist

Truth: I’m still working with all of my Radian6 colleagues to perfect this inside our own organization, so please don’t think you need to nail it out of the gate. We’re figuring out what questions people have. Finding ways to share information faster and better. Offering insights about what’s working and what’s not and where we’re hoping to head.

Just DO IT. Get started, somewhere. Waiting until you have all the details hammered out isn’t realistic, because they’ll always be shifting (and that’s not unique to this, either). Move past the “wow, nifty” part of social media, and get started talking about how it really matters to your work.

So how about you? What challenges are you facing getting your colleagues to understand and embrace social media? Are they on board with the idea, but lost about how to apply it? Have you considered your internal implications?

The comments belong to you.

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