Much of the fear of social media is driven by a lack of understanding about it from the top. Getting leadership to use social media themselves is a major hurdle, yes, but once accomplished will drive org-wide adoption like almost nothing else. I’ve seen clients use invitation only blogs, wikis and the hash(#) technology associated with twitter-like tools with great success.

For example, a client of another PR colleague was dithering about using Social Media to reach individuals in the Pharmaceutical industry. I suggested searching for the phrase “Pharma.” There happened to be a national Pharma event going on that week, and there was loads of conversation going on using Twitter. Boom – the potential for a direct connection to their market opened their eyes.

Another example, we were asked to pitch a national membership-based association on integrating a social media marketing plan into their overall marketing plan, but some board members were not quite convinced. We provided links to searches of Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook, and blog posts and were able to show them that at almost 100 hundred of the local chapters were already using one or more of these sites to communicate about their chapter, plus a good number of non-members who were seeking organizational info via these channels.

It is a shift though, to finding your constituents where they like to hang out. Selecting the right site to start with, learning that sites ‘culture,’ then approaching them in the right way, with the right message. It can be done.