How to coax your execs through the 5 stages of social media acceptance

Want to get your top executives and long-time employees behind your social media efforts? You’ve got to take them through the five stages of social media acceptance, according to Glenn Raley, IT manager at insurance provider Humana.

“There’s always a bunch of people who want to give you reasons why none of this stuff works,” Raley told a group at a Ragan Communications conference at Microsoft headquarters.

What are those five stages? They’re mostly familiar: denial, fear, exploration, understanding and acceptance.

The way to carry your bosses and your colleagues through those stages, Raley, suggested, is to use ideas you find on popular websites such as YouTube, Wikipedia and TinyURL.

The five stages

In the denial stage, people in the executive level might say, “Oh, but that’s a fad. It’ll die out,” Raley said.

Similarly, the fear stage will bring out lawyers and people who keep an eye on compliance issues, those who will worry about leaking company information and lawsuits. In that case, Raley suggests “using your pundits against themselves.”