What to say when your boss asks "What's the value of being on Social Media?"

If you're in the marketing and advertising industry, chances are you’ve been in that awkward situation where your boss asked what’s the whole point of having the company on social media. Well, I've been in this situation a couple of times, and over time I’ve developed a nifty little framework that could help you say exactly what your boss would need to hear. 

First of all, you need to ask yourself, what is your boss actually asking? Your boss is asking where is the “Value” regarding being on Instagram, Facebook and all these other platforms. In other words, what is the importance, worth, or usefulness of such activity? 

I think it's fair to say that in order to answer this question in the best way possible, we need to understand what Value actually is. How do you define it? How do you translate it in a way that it makes sense to anyone listening?

So I've been obsessing over this very topic for the last few years and this is my take on the subject. Value is defined by people, where there are no people there is no value. We create value and decide where it should go. Now if it can be created, then there must be some kind of recipe for it? That’s where this framework comes in. These concepts can be found at the core of anything that really brings value, and therefore you can use it as hot points when trying to explain to your boss why your company needs to put more effort into Instagram.

 1. Context (Access to information)

 2. Time (Context Time)

 3. Connections (A link to people) 

 4. Ideal Self (Appeal to Ideal Self)

Context:

For someone to be able to attach value to something, they need to understand the right details in the right context. For example, a decade ago your company paid R50,000 to place a TV advert with a viewing potential of 150,000 people. Today, you could post an advert on Instagram for R50,000 to reach a viewing potential of 220,000 people, plus you can know exactly whom the advert reached, and target those exact people with a follow-up advert on another social media platform if necessary.

Providing enough context in a way your boss would understand could really help them grasp the value without you having to pull out all the social media stats you learned in university.

Time:

Time is by far the most consistent measuring stick in the world. Everyone understands how important it is and what it means to them. If you can present a concept in a way that shows how it will save time either today or in the future, you are halfway to a home run. Let's say your company is working on a new campaign, for example. But your team is not sure which campaign tagline would work best. Instead of taking 2 months to do qualitative research you could take a week to test both campaign taglines with two sets of the same target audience and make your decision based on the performance.

Connections:

At the core of every human being is a need to connect. That's why we were put on this earth, to be able to make connections with people and to be able to have relationships. When you can show someone how something can help them connect with the people they love or the group of people they want to connect with the most, that thing becomes extremely valuable. In this case, social media is probably the best tool to use when a business is trying to make a connection with their target audience. Not only can you send messages to your audience but they can send messages back.

Ideal Self:

Everyone has two different versions of themselves. There is a real self and ideal self. The ideal self is the person you would want to be seen as. The picture you draw of yourself in your head regardless of your reality. It is what we base most of our buying decisions on and impacts the way we view the world. If you can show someone how what you have can help them validate their ideal self, you would be appealing to the very thing that makes them tick and that works magic. For example, if you told your boss that if the company has a great social media presence it would increase the company's likelihood of being chosen or added to the Forbes list by 60% compared to other companies with the exact same financials that don't have a great Instagram page.