Anyone who has ever had to sell a client or boss on the adopting social media in one form or another is likely well aware of the kind of skepticism that they can encounter. Regardless of your sales tools (visual aids, statistic, etc...), the largest obstacle any social media advocate will face is misunderstand or a complete lack thereof.

Of course, the moment you contradict someone's initial impressions , you make your pitch twice as difficult. They'll get stubborn and dig in their heel. You can't, however, take this personally: that is human nature, and you've probably been guilty of just such reflexive stubbornness on countless occasions.

What you have to do, then, when encountering that kind stubbornness, is take a new approach. Reiterating your previous rationale and repeating your previous tactics will only exacerbate the resistance that you're now facing. At that point, if you're not an evangelist who can turn water into wine, you have to resort to appealing to client's self-interest. Well, Rohit Bhargava has five suggestions on how you can frame that self-interest along the lines of zero-sum competition. After all, people tend to respond more quickly to immediate threats than to potential opportunities. Summarized, these lines of argument are as follows.

1. People are talking about us or our industry.
2. Their conversations are highly visible and influential.
3. We have no unique voice and are not part of the conversation.
4. Our competitors are moving faster than we are.
5. We can start small and work our way up.

Rohit, of course, goes into greater detail, but the brilliance of each of his points is their respective simplicity. In other words, you should check out the original post to get a little insight on how to provide a little insight of your own to your client/boss.

On a side note, however, if a blog is the first step toward social media that you are advocating, you might want to emphasize the tangible advantages of using one. That is, you might want to illustrate the SEO benefits of blogging. Once you've whet their palate with that potential, close the deal by demonstrating how 6 simple steps to blogging make adoption and implementation a breeze.