This post stems from notes I gathered while attending the session "Selling Social Media to the Man" at the SXSW 2009 Interactive conference. The panel consisted of Peter Kim of beingpeterkim.com, Miles Sims of communitymetrics.com, Small World labs VP of Product, Rebecca Caroe of creativeagencysecrets.com and Christian Caldwell of heart.org.

Q. ROI metrics for social media? Use ROI to help build your case. Although, ROI and social media have a rather ambigious relationship. But do try to use case studies and examples to help. From there, develop your own, including projections. One of the keys to social media is that it, in itself, should help drive other bottom line metrics (but you must show that connection). Impressions, digital advertising, cost-effectiveness ('how much did we save?' compared to other tools), brand awareness, lead generation and customer acquisition are good examples of these metrics that could be used. The answer to the ROI question is "it depends", depending on how your organization is setup, ROI though, is always moving.

Q. What can it do for us or our customers? Spreads brand awareness and creates another way for that connection to happen. Although this being said, your company must be ready for real customers with real feedback. You must plan and have the resources to handle this. It could potentially be overwhelming.

Q. What if we fail? Most attendees agree that they have experienced, within their organization, some sort of fear climate in their management, they tend to fear a failure or loss of control in some sense. Don't succumb to this, keep pressing on, don't fear failure. Show successes and failures, embrace them all. That type of transparency is what can aide a culture change within your organization. Be the catalyst for change! If you don't want to fight the good fight, then move on.

Q. How do we ensure success on our first social media attempt? It's an evolution, not a campaign that stops and starts. You're doing something bigger here, your helping create a change, a culture change. What social media is doing is helping build communities and reaching out to information seekers. Social media is a different channel but does not live on it's own island. It should be part of your marketing strategy; set expectations correctly and demystify those negative rumor mill stories your management has heard. For your first one:

• Be realistic
• Ensure it fits into what you're doing
• Keep it simple
• Show business value
• Make sure you can answer the question, "How does this help our customers?"

Understand your customers, show successes and failures, engage in conversation and articulate metrics. One of the advantages about social media is that you can immediately gauge how well you're doing.

Q. What about legal?

• Involve legal.
• See if you can get some leniency to have experiments and test/gather the concerns.
• Create common sense guidelines, e.g. “Don’t do anything stupid."
• Show that competitors are active in the space, this can motivate execs and even legal to take a few more risks.
• It’s a myth that entering social media means completely giving up control. Yes, this happens to a certain extent, but you can still control many aspects of your message and brand.

Q: Which departments are more or less supportive of social media? Evangelists can come from all departments. There aren’t particular patterns to support or blockages from different people. It’s more about attitude i.e. control freaks. Don’t assume that the younger folk will necessarily be more savvy to social media. There are some CEOs who are fired up and ready to go. Q: Best way to achieve success?

• Planning.
• Sharing success and failure with the organization.
• Define up front how you will evaluate success.

Q: Using things like Facebook or Twitter at work: productivity drain or worthwhile? Execs fear social media will be a big distraction. No different to when the web first came into the office. And no different to when computers were first installed (“oh no, people will play solitaire all day”). The key here is to prove it's value and worth. Then watch the resistance fade.