Explaining social media to people who don’t necessarily “get it” is becoming more commonplace in working at an agency, so it was timely that Greg Verdino would be giving a presentation on turning skeptics into advocates. Greg is the chief strategy officer at Crayon, a strategic consultancy that offers donuts and pony rides – not really – strategic insights to brands like Coca-Cola, Facebook, Audi and Panasonic.
Greg is all social-ed up with a few different blogs, and profiles on Twitter, Facebook, and Posterous, but he’s quick to point out that it’s a function of what I (and others) like to call “geek cred”; you can’t advocate for social media unless you’re doing it. [Great point - I have a couple blogs and the requisite Twitter handle and Facebook accounts, but I wonder how many agency folks sell this stuff without know what it takes to blog or the like.]
His preso is embedded below, so just a couple of quick points I’ll share. Greg said that in many cases, clients will be resistant to getting involved with social media because of one of four things:
- Ignorance. This is not to say they’re unintelligent, but rather they just don’t have any foundation of experience on which to understand social media.
- Fear. They’ve never done it, they don’t know how they’ll be judged and they’re afraid of making the wrong decision.
- Laziness. They prefer to continue doing it the way they’ve done it, because that’s what has worked (or has been perceived as working) for many years.
- Stuck. They don’t know how to get started, so they become paralyzed.
The key point I thought was so spot-on was that, whatever the cause, this response of hesitation is not new. It was the same way advertisers responded when cable television came to be, and certainly again with the advent of the Internet. The slideshow below has more discussion on the solutions, but Greg’s key points for turning a skeptic to an advocate are that you need to: keep it simple, be clear, be hands-on, and come armed with tangible benefits.
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