Selling Social Media to Your Executive Team, Part Two

After writing the initial "how to sell social media to your executive team," I served on a panel with social media experts, who had some great (and steal-able) ideas on the topic.

* Do an analysis of what your competition is doing and show that to your executive team. It's pretty amazing what happens when you show the CEO that his/her competition is using social media successfully. Suddenly you no longer have to sell the idea!

* Create not just share of voice or volume share charts, but also share of conversation to show the c-suite that social media is not only driving traffic (eyeballs) but also that it's contributing to the conversation, in terms of referrals or recommendations. Companies such as Radian6 can help you with this, pretty inexpensively.

* Go to the Arment Dietrich Delicious page, where we've bookmarked social media policies for all types of businesses. Download the ones most like your company and share them with your general counsel.

* Demonstrate your knowledge of how social media affects the entire company, including human resources, customer service, marketing, communication, sales, and the executive team. Show case studies on how each department, even if they're not using social media directly, benefit from the company's use of it... from a dollars-and-cents position.

* Provide the executive team with a real analysis of how social media will increase sales. This happens through increased online sales, better and qualified leads, a referral network from your community, and/or sampling.

* Know which buttons make your executives excited and use those to your advantage. Some CEOs are egomaniacs (did I say some? I mean most!) and think seeing their name in lights is going to help increase sales. Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. But if you can help create an expert of your chief executive through the social media channels, show him/her how it will benefit the business, as well as stroke their ego.

* Be prepared. Have a plan. Develop a strategy. And don't forget the benchmarks. It's OK if your benchmark is zero or if you have to create a new benchmark that has never been there before. Just make sure you have something, with goals for increasing in 30 days, 90 days, six months, and a year.

What other ideas have worked for you?