In the course of a week I talk to a lot of people about social media, most of them corporate types.

Often they are keen to use social media for some legitimate business purpose, but they don't have the arguments or the confidence to convince others of its worth.

Making a business case and overcoming objections is part of corporate life. Here are the most common objections I encounter and some possible rebuttals.

1. Our audience isn't on social media.

Variations on this one include social media is only for kids, institutional investors don't use social media and we don't sell to consumers so we don't need to be on there.

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

First of all, statistically speaking almost everyone in North America is on or getting on social networks of one sort or another. Facebook is at or above 500 million users, Twitter has 100 million users, LinkedIn has 75 million users and YouTube is the second-biggest search engine in the world.

Canadian firm Zinc Research reported last year that 80 per cent of Canadians are on the Internet and about 70 per cent of them are on a social network.

Brunswick Research published study results last November indicating 47 per cent of institutional investors read blogs to get investment ideas and research.

Dominic Jones of IRWebReport.com wrote last month: "Fully 20 per cent of institutional investors and sell-side analysts surveyed by the Australasian Investor Relations Association (AIRA) and communications firm

Financial & Corporate Relations (FCR) said that information accessed through social media channels had influenced their investment decisions."

In August, the Vancouver Sun quoted stats from Ottawa digital public affairs strategist Mark Blevis pegging MP use of Twitter in the 20 per cent range.

Even if your company doesn't sell a consumer product, you still sell ideas. Hello? Digital lobbying anyone?

Since the concept of "everyone" is big enough to include your target, I think it's fair to say you can find who you need to interact with somewhere on the social web, regardless of who you are after.

2. I don't have time or resources to deal with social media.

Good communicators follow the audience. This objection sounds only slightly reasonable because the medium is new.

Imagine if someone said to you: "I don't have time for this phone thing?" It's ludicrous.

A communicator's goal is to reach the right people with the right messages at the right frequency and at the lowest cost per thousand.

So if they're on social media and that's cheaper than a TV ad or your annual report, including this channel is the responsible thing to do. That doesn't mean you have all the resources you need now, but you can make the case. It's budget season right now in many corporations. Set aside $60,000 (hint, steal it from that lame video no one was going to watch) and get it going in 2011.

3. People will say mean things about us.

They already are, and being silent won't make that untrue. Provide some balance and an alternative viewpoint or you are conceding defeat to your opponents. Why roll over?

4. IT says it's a security risk.

Like lawyers, some IT managers would prefer you do nothing so as to be risk-free. Don't open attachments, don't go to websites, don't use a thumb drive, never use Wi-Fi and on and on. Their job is to batten down the hatches and keep the storm outside. Your job is to interact with the outside world.

More progressive IT managers will help you, even encourage you, to use technology, including social media, to achieve business objectives while mitigating risk. Nowadays, if your firewall blocks Facebook, it likely blocks all Facebook-enabled websites, which is rapidly becoming all websites.

It tends to annoy the CEOs when they can't even get to major news sites, which is what happened to a client of mine. Work with IT to gain access to the tools you need -- don't let the tail wag the dog.

There are always lots of excuses to not do new things. Hopefully the above gives you a few ideas on what to say so you can do new things. When I see Pepsi take $24 million out of the Super Bowl and put it into social media campaigns such as Pepsi Refresh, I think, there's a company that knows how to maximize impressions, do good and save money all in one shot.

Next year you, too, could be a budget hero with social media, if you start to make the case right now.

Doug Lacombe is president of Calgary social media agency communicatto.