If part of your job involves building a business case and winning executive buy-in for social media initiatives inside organizations, you don’t want to miss this episode with Brian Solis, released on the eve of the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas.

Over the last few years, Future Works founder Brian Solis has shot like a rocket to the top on the social media influence pyramid. His Conversation Prism has become the de facto graphic for appraising social media channels. His first book, “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations,” which he co-wrote with Deirdre Breckenridge made the argument for social media engagement, and his just released new book “Engage” provides practical guidance for piloting social media initiatives inside organizations.

In this episode, which was conducted in association with research I’m currently conducting for a book on B2B applications of social media to be published by Wiley late 2010/early 2011, Brian reveals how he wins buy-in and acceptance for social media pilot programs with corporate stakeholders inside organizations.

01:24 – Brian talks about the “ah-ha” and “uh-oh” moments, which usually crystallize the perceived need for social media engagement inside organizations.

02:49 – Using the Conversation Prism to collect meaningful research by searching the each of the different social media channels to uncover where the hot spots are for any given organization. And based on the findings from those queries, Brian talks about designing social media initiatives that address tangible business needs.

03:31 – Without the research that comes from a thorough investigation of who’s saying what where about a given product, brand or service, there’s no way to ask the right questions to have the “ah-ha” moment. According to Brian, it is important to understand that conversations are constantly occurring online that drive all kinds of business decisions. And unless we actually seek out and gauge in the right conversations by listening through filters those decisions will be made without us. It’s the realization that there are not just conversations taking place across the social web.

03:46 – “There are not just conversations taking place across the social web. There are influential decision-making steps and processes and considerations that are taking place that are transpiring right now, without us. And when you can demonstrate the exact cause and effect of what’s transpiring and to what extent, then that “ah-ha” moment is pretty profound,” Brian explains.

05:54 – Successfully implementing social media initiatives inside organizations requires that the projects lead ultimately transition from champion to diplomat, because it is critical to raise awareness of what needs to be accomplished and the required resources to pull it off among the executives who can fund pilots, and who or may not be directly involved in the initiative.

06:33 – “What’s going to be important to these folks [decision makers with P&L responsibility] is that we apply information to them in a way that they’re used to measuring it. Even though this is new medium, we have to help them learn by speaking their language, and then ultimately teaching them something new, almost like learning a new language through immersion,” says Brian.

07:12 – Much as when ad agencies bid accounts on spec, in order to make the case for a social media initiative, it is necessary to invest the time and resources to figure out where the relevant conversations are taking place, and to try and determine which departments of the organization are most impacted by these conversations. Are the conversations surrounding customer service issues, engineering issues or marketing-related issues? The idea is to collect and attribute online conversations to the specific business units or departments inside the organization that they apply. For Brian, the key to winning buy-in is research, but once he’s got it completed, he’s still not done.

08:01 -- Brian takes all his research, puts into a snazzy PowerPoint deck and presents it to the C Suite business decision makers to win buy-in. It’s important that the presentation be distilled to the point where it’s not overwhelming. It must provide clear overview as to the opportunities that exist, and provide tangible suggestions of what can be done to address them and then how those efforts will be learned over time.

09:43 – When it comes to the argument about whether or not it’s necessary to justify the ROI of social media engagement, Brian takes the high road. “Change isn’t always something that’s easy to embrace. Maybe the demand for metrics or ROI is stall tactic, because there’s this fear of change or what have you. But whatever it is, don’t spend your energy and resources debating it. Just work with it,” says Brian. And social media can be measured more effectively than old school marketing and public relations.

11:21 – When it comes to measuring social media, Brian likes to establish the cost per action because in his mind, that’s the most tangible metric for determining the value of a conversation. In other words, what happened as a result of the conversation? Whether its click-throughs, links, registrations, shares, downloads or sales, cost per action focuses on the outcome of the conversations, rather than the conversation itself, but it’s important to note that sales are not the only measurable transactions that have real business value to organizations.

12:18 – The most common question Brian gets from stakeholders inside organizations about social media implementation is, “What is that we’re going to accomplish? How many people is this going to take? And what’s going to cost? And then, what does success look like? I hear that in every single conversation,” says Brian. And one way to get those answers is through research, which he has a blue print for conducting at www.conversationprism.com.

13:01 – By documenting, categorizing and quantifying the results of your research by issue and the part of the organization impacted, you build the business case. Based on the formula Brian lays out in his book Engage, finding relevant conversations, engaging whoever’s behind them, monitoring for their response and then following up takes roughly 25 minutes of someone’s time. So if you’re going to try and measure cost per action, it really comes back to the amount of time you’ve invested in a conversation to try and stimulate that action. So if it’s 25 minutes per action, you just look at the research and evaluate which conversations the organization has the organization has the most to gain by engaging, count up the number of conversations and multiply by 20 to 25 minutes per engagement, and that will give you some idea of what kind of resources you need to address that opportunity.

15:14 – In terms of where the pockets of resistance for social media engagement are inside most organizations, Brian says it’s different every time. But a lot of it has to do with where the champions for social media inside that organization are. “The thing that I’ve learned is this. If there aren’t already champions there -- and based on the research you will find that there are multiple opportunities, you just have to prioritize which one it is that you pilot based on the data that comes back – everyone has concerns, or they also have incorrect perspectives with respect to what can be accomplished through social media. So there’s a lot of education there. So having answers to all the skeptical questions that you could possibly get before you go into that meeting is going to be extremely helpful because people will ask you more questions that will postpone doing it the right way. So having those answers is what it’s going to take to get at least some, initial level of support,” says Brian. You might not get enterprise wide acceptance from the get go, but that’s okay. Focus on getting the resources for the pilot program and use that as an opportunity to demonstrate value to others inside the organization.

16:42 – When Brian is doing his research, his uses the Katie Paine method of coupling words indicative...