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THE SCENARIO

Help! I want to use social media including LinkedIn and Twitter during my work day because I know it can increase my influence and help me develop new business. But my manager has banned checking in and posting on social media during working hours. How can I persuade him that it's a good investment of time?

THE ADVICE

This is indeed a frustrating situation, especially since your personal experience with social media has exposed you to many of the possibilities and you are keen to bring this experience into your workplace. All is not lost though; here is some perspective and a few tips:

Meet your manager's agenda

The first step is to ensure that you know your manager's expectations. For a manager to be successful, he needs to fully utilize – and motivate – all of his staff. And for you to be successful, you need to help your manager by delivering on his agenda, not yours. If you don't have clarity on his priorities, find out. Only then might you be able to "pitch" how social media might help meet his needs.

Keep your promises

Too often, the reason for saying "no" to social media requests is the fear of lost productivity. If you develop a track record of always meeting or exceeding expectations and being on time and on budget, then you have a stronger argument for adding social media-oriented tasks into the mix. And here's some advice to supervisors: It's far more effective managing to objectives and holding staff accountable, than managing time.

Marshal your arguments

Put together a list of reasons why social media is necessary for your role and examples of why it makes you more effective. The most obvious one is that a stronger connection to suppliers and customers means stronger business relationships.

Other arguments could include the need for professional support, market research/competitive intelligence, connection with job candidates, or brand monitoring.

Probably one of the strongest arguments is that social media has replaced "traditional" parts of some jobs. Public relations pros no longer use traditional press releases, for example, but instead actively engage in social media. Marketers no longer rely exclusively on traditional surveys, but also monitor "sentiment" in social media. And internal recruiters increasingly source candidates via social media sites, sometimes in favour of traditional job boards.

If it's necessary to connect to actually do your job, then not using these new tools means lowered productivity, and competitive disadvantage.

Educate the decision-makers

Sometimes, a decision to prevent access is made only because the decision-makers don't understand the possibilities. If this is the case, then providing this education is a great first step: Send helpful articles to your senior managers; engage with them informally; or suggest a book explaining why social media is a good business tool. Once they have the same information you have, they will likely draw the same conclusions.

Suggest a policy change

Often, large organizations use high-tech firewalls to restrict access to certain types of websites on company computers. These decisions were likely made to prevent unauthorized access to corporate data (hacking), but may have come to be seen as way to protect productivity.

If this is the case, try putting forward these arguments. First, most organizations do not improve by restricting communications with important stakeholder groups. Second, if there are no restrictions on phone communications, why restrict textual communication? And finally, employees are increasingly bringing in their smart phones and computer tablets that are capable of accessing social media, completely bypassing the corporate firewall.



Identify benchmarks

Some managers don't want to be first out of the gate, but will be more agreeable if they see social media being used successfully elsewhere. Canvas other departments for examples of this, and then look externally at your customers, competitors and suppliers. If you can show your boss that use of social media is widespread, and growing, you may sway his opinion.

Do it on your own time

Finally, if nothing else works and you are looking to prove to your manager that there is a benefit to using social media for your job, put some of your own skin in the game. Use it at home, after hours, on company work, and look for a few big wins.



Randall Craig is president of Toronto-based Pinetree Advisors and author of Social Media for Business.





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