How leaders can benefit from social media I The Defender

In my close to 30 years of industry experience, I've seen it all on the social media front from CEO meltdowns to CEOs who thrive in the new digital landscape. All of this comes thanks to the transparency that these digital media outlets provide. Thanks to an April 2019 study by Brunswick, nearly half the S&P 500 and FTSE 350 CEOs now have a social media presence, but only one in four have posted within the past year. This is a shocking number to me because the expectations for leaders are very different. Some of these expectations from team members and outside parties include the importance for social media in communications, the positive impact that an external social media message will have on the company and what it stands for, and then ultimately, the role model that the leader will play for employees within the organization. Do you think an Elon Musk would be as popular as he is today if it wasn't for Twitter?

Other reasons that employees and external forces are interested in leaders who utilize and leverage social media also include how they go about leveraging and using social media in times of crisis. Leaders with a strong social media position are also in a strong situation where they could actually attract more employees and new talent to the organization. And of course ultimately, it also means they can be in a great position to establish for new business. So what are the some of the steps that you can take as a leader to be able to establish your social media presence both for external purposes as well as for internal purposes?
Well, the first is to establish the potential. Take that first step. If you are scared and you're unsure, take the first step of establishing whether it is Crunchbase information, whether it is Wikipedia, or just simply updating your leadership profile on your website.
The second step is to build on the first and work with your internal communications team on establishing your social media strategy for your external comms purposes and establishing yourself first at least on one social media site like LinkedIn.
The third step is building on the first two. So now you have a strategy in place, but you're now actively engaged with at least one social media platform, again, like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram and that you're actively posting on a regular basis based on a calendar of activities.
It's not only satisfying, but it gives you fuel.
The fourth step, and this is where you are really connected, is where you actually have a presence, and you're actively engaged, leveraging your strategy and your content calendar, where you're communicating across at least three social media platforms. Three out of the four main ones and you'll be in good shape.
So for my part, in addition to those four steps, I also like to be able to emulate and to be able to reflect upon those leaders who are just knocking it out of the park from a social media presence. And personally, I'm really pleased to be able to follow and kind of emulate what Adena Friedman, the CEO of Nasdaq, is doing. She's actually active across all four of the major platforms, and she personally is active. She doesn't just have somebody posting for her, and she's very engaging and very purposeful in how she communicates both externally as well as internally, I'm sure, to her teams and her organization.
And on top of that, what I like to be able to do as well is I actually like to spend a little bit of time looking at LinkedIn's Social Selling Index, SSI. And I challenge you to go back and look at what your SSI is because it'll give you a really strong indication as to how well connected you are. And I have a good feeling that many of you aren't, and you'll be very surprised by what you find on that SSI index.
Here's a great tip for you from the producers at Dreamline Digital, where you can actually leverage the insights you accumulate thanks to Google analytics as well as to LinkedIn, and you post based on what's trending and what's profiling versus how you might feel on that particular day. If you add up all those four steps and more, you will be in a position where you truly are a connected leader. So I challenge you to take those four steps and share with me and post below what kind of feedback and what kind of experience you're having.
Thanks again for watching The Defender. Don't forget to subscribe to my Rumble channel. Like, comment, and share below. And oh, by the way, a shout out to the folks over at Dreamline Digital. Don't forget to check out their webpage as well. They're doing an incredible job of emphasizing and supporting leaders in their promotion of their online presence and their social media message. I'm Gregory Wade. You're watching The Defender.

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