From Innovations, a website published by Ziff-Davis Enterprise from mid-2006 to mid-2009. Reprinted by permission.

Over the last couple of entries, I’ve talked about the benefits of deploying social network technology internally for business benefit. While the benefits may be clear to you, chances are you have to get past the sticky process of selling the idea to management, who invariably ask the return on investment (ROI) question.

ROI is important but it’s also a smokescreen that executives can use to avoid spending money. Corporations invest in plenty of functions that have vague ROI, including human resources and training. Unfortunately, social networking projects don’t lend themselves to clean ROI calculations. The benefits of better communications, more productive collaboration and access to organizational knowledge don’t fit neatly into a spreadsheet.

If you’re stuck on ROI, point to the often-neglected “I” part of the equation: investment. The new of tools, many of which are open source, are often significantly less expensive than the proprietary programs they replace. Then ask managers to consider the cost of a sales opportunity lost because team members didn’t have access to relevant knowledge within the organization. Or look at turnover rates and ask what the value is of capturing the knowledge that those departing workers take with them.

The best way to justify social media investments is through examples. Every large organization has a few people who understand the transformative effects of technology and who are eager to try new things. Embrace these people as your allies, particularly if their organizations produce revenue. Enlist them to participate in a pilot project that applies social networking concepts and technologies to an existing process. Perhaps it’s replacing an over-engineered project management system with a wiki. Or maybe it’s adopting podcasts in lieu of staff-wide conference calls. Offer all the support you can to make the pilot work. The experiences of early adopters wills rapidly spread throughout the organization.

One key to successful adoption of any new technology is to eliminate alternatives. If people are told to use a wiki for collaboration, for example, but still have the option of communicating with colleagues by e-mail, they will choose the latter. People default to the path of least resistance, and that usually means sticking with what they know. You have to remove that option to demonstrate the effectiveness of an alternative solution. You can’t eliminate alternatives, but you’re sponsor can. That’s why choosing allies at the management level is so important.

A successful pilot project is a foundation for revisiting the ROI question. Interview project participants to document their impressions. Identify what they believe are the cost savings or revenue opportunities. Share these field experiences with the skeptics. Real-life stories are more convincing than formulas.

Supplement this with an internal public relations effort. Subscribe to RSS feeds of bloggers and publications that advocate for your position. Share expert opinions and published case studies with your internal decision-makers. Keep an eye out, in particular, for activities by your competitors. Don’t expect results overnight, but with time and repetition, you can wear down the critics.