As we gear up for our next BlogWell in San Diego on February 16 — featuring social media case studies from Starbucks, Clorox, USAA, Intuit, Avery Dennison, Community Medical Centers, State Farm Insurance, and the U.S. Navy — I’m sharing some of my favorite big ideas from BlogWell Atlanta as a preview.

In their presentation, The Home Depot’s Nick Ayres and Sarah Molinari covered how they’ve built their social media program and how they staff and run it today, as well as a few lessons they have learned. Here are a few of their ideas:

• Listening is a start, but it’s only the very start. Nick explained that we’ve all heard that listening is important, but the caveat to that is you need to be really prepared to deal with the feedback you receive.
• When it comes to staffing, look at the people already helping your customers every day. Sarah shared how they’ve had a lot of success pulling a few reps who were otherwise answering the phone to help with social media outreach and response.
• Sell social media internally by focusing on those who “get it.” Nick recommended accepting the reality that some of your corporate peers will just never get social media. And while he says it’s important to work with these people when possible, you’ll have much better success by focusing on those who already believe in it.

See the live presentation here:

Related posts:

1. Andy’s Answers: How SunGard built social media from within
2. Andy’s Answers: How Dell’s social media program is evolving
3. Andy’s Answers: How the U.S. Navy manages their social-media program