20 Questions To Start a Social Media Discussion by Amber Naslund
Let’s make something clear: you can be the person that starts asking the questions and initiating the conversations that move social media forward. You. Sitting right there. Yes, you.
I don’t care if you’re the marketing assistant, the PR coordinator, the customer service manager, the HR director, or the mailroom clerk. What it takes is the intent to be part of the progress, the bravery to start an open conversation, the maturity and patience to not make it personal, and the investment in the outcomes to take it a step further.
These are not just conversations for the communications department. Be courageous. Pick up the phone, or fire up the email, and ask for 15 minutes of time from the people that can help move social media forward in your organization (or at least reduce some of the friction around it). That means the marketing folks, the customer service folks, finance, HR, PR, product management, QA, sales. Yes, that includes the people you’ve never talked to before, and the ones that aren’t in your “box”.
Ask them one or two questions that can help you form a business case for social media. Your goal is to align social’s capabilities with the problems your organization needs or wants to solve for their own business. Note that the questions below aren’t all specific to social media; they’re attempting to uncover some of the underlying culture, brand, and operational issues that social media could help address. Remember, we’re talking culture change as well as operational change. You need to be the one to translate.
- What do we do and why, in your words (not a vision statement)? On what could we, as a business, spend more time, energy, and focus?
- Are you passionate about your role? If so, why? If not, what would help you be?
- What goals do you have for your role this year? How do you hope to impact the success of your department? The company?
- ….. Yes there are more. 17 in fact. Read Altitude – Great Blog
I found this through my buddy David Brake Author of The Social Media Bible. His book is hot and has the stickiness that books named the Bible should have. Read about him in Fast Company.
