I just came across a good post from a few months back by Chris Brogan on selling social media internally. It’s marketing-focused but very relevant to all comms crowds – and I assume some people will find it interesting as I see from my site stats that my posts on selling digital to clients in PA are quite popular.
Two points stand out for me as particularly relevant as selling points to a PA crowd that is uncomfortable with social media:
- Internally, social media tools can be used to help with status information, training, project collaboration.
- Building an online social media component to most marketing and PR efforts ensures a better reach for the media created.
The point about using social media tools as an internal tool can, as Chris states, be helpful for a variety of processes. Even more importantly, it’s a lot less daunting and thus an easier sell when you say: “let’s try out this really basic tool internally (a blog perhaps?) and if we’re all comfortable with it after a few months, we can try it out on a relevant client project.” The second point is a great sell as well because it allows you to focus on regular media relations, which traditionalists of course value and feel comfortable with. So what you’re doing is not selling social media as something new and different, but as a set of tools that can add value to your traditional media relations by improving reach and quality e.g. a good 30 second YouTube interview with the person quoted in your press release .
Steffen Moller 