My Boss Doesn't Get It: Championing Social Media to the Man
	Posted by Jordan Viator at Mar 14, 2009 10:40 AM CDT Categories: Constituent Empowerment , NPtech , Social Media

Selling social media to the "man" aka your boss, your board members or your management team can be an uphill battle, so it's no surprise that one of the opening sessions at this year's SXSWi was one entitled "My Boss Doesn't Get it: Championing Social Media to the Man."

The ballroom session was filled, literally standing room only, with a crowd of both business and nonprofit professionals alike all facing similar challenges from one root cause -- they want to evangelize social media in their workplace yet continually face opposition from their management team and interanl decision makers.

To equip the crowd with tips, lessons learned and yes, even a few horror stories from the battle lines of championing social media in their respective lines of work, Miles Sims and Michael Wilson of Small World Labs, Peter Kim of Dachis Corporation, Rebecca Caroe of CreativeAgencySecrets.com and Christian Caldwell of American Heart Association all gathered to share their collective wisdom on the subject.

I think the most interesting take away for me was to see the same issues, hardships and roadblocks currently being experienced in both the corporate and nonprofit realms, and that despite size budget and location, almost all organizations and businesses are telling a similar story. In the end, the group shared these pearls of wisdom for the SXSWi goers to take home:

Most common hardships

• People internally who continue to seek "control"
• AHS some people have worked in the organization their entire careers: not exactly open to change or new trends
• People internally think social media projects will bring with them an entire office of employees playing on Second Life and Facebook

Best tips on championing social media

• Create a SWAT team of evangelists internally who fight and work for the cause
• Show small success along the way to keep people believing
• Find others internally who are interested or already engaged in social media in other places (personal blogs, etc)
• Slow down and listen to what your organization really needs (it's not a one size fits all "magic bullet")
• Recruiting older/more traditional people in the organization who don't get the worth and show them how viral and powerful these tools and channels can be to have them understand and evangelize with you (show how quickly things spread, how much more you can be doing with recruiting, teaching supporters in these spaces on top of other channels)
• Find people in other respected organizations or competitors doing similar work and show them the success (or at least that these projects are not harmful!)
• Find ways other than money to measure success:
  -recruiting new prospect into in your database
  -speed of research

And for the panels "tops"....

Top Challenge to getting social media projects approved

• Being realistic in how things will run and what the outcome will be
• Over-engineering projects and plans
• Finding a way to show business value

Top Way to Best ensure success

• Good planning and understanding of constituent base when creating social media projects
• Telling the results back to internal audience so that success/failure is acknowledge
• Building a culture of understanding and openess to try new tactics
• Articulating what the metrics are that matter to your organization
• Defining upfront what metrics you wish to use so you know what you are going to measure from the beginning

Any other great tips, tricks or stories from the social media front?

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