The Power of a Social CEO

How often is it that you know the names of the C-level executives within your company? Leave alone what departments they head and what are their areas of expertise? If the answer to this question is a No, you have a CEO who is not very personable. You might wonder how this might affect a company’s image? Because CEOs are meant to be behind the boardrooms, they only make their presence felt in the most crucial decision making within the company. But that was a few years back and the current market doesn’t allow executives to be away from the grass root levels for long.Social Media bridges this gap between the C-level executives and the public. Executives certainly know what social media is. Executives can even claim to know what makes social media so potent: its ability to amplify word-of-mouth effects. Yet the vast majority of executives have no idea how to harness social media’s power. Companies diligently establish Twitter feeds and branded Facebook pages, but few have a deep understanding of exactly how social media interacts with consumers to expand product and brand recognition, drive sales and profitability, and engender loyalty.Most senior executives in companies at present come under the digital immigrant category. This does not necessarily mean that all these executives are slow adopters to technology and the world of social media. There are a few who have been early adopters and are doing well for themselves, but most people have been reluctant or find it hard to get out of their comfort zone and accept the influx of technology into their lives.Today’s chief executive can no longer treat social media as a side activity run solely by managers in marketing or public relations. It’s much more than simply another form of paid marketing, and it demands more too: a clear framework to help CEOs and other top executives evaluate investments in it, a plan for building support infrastructure, and performance-management systems to help leaders smartly scale their social presence.Personalized communication is a very important part of establishing long lasting relationships with your customers. Social CEOs are gaining traction. A Weber Shandwick report says, overall, the number using social media is still low, at just 28 percent. Of those, there is a distinct favoring of some platforms over others. The most popular social networks used by CEOs are LinkedIn, used by 22 percent and Twitter, used by 10 percent, none of the CEOs said they used Facebook or Google+ despite 10 percent claiming to have been using Facebook back in 2012.In one of his tweets, Peter Aceto, CEO and President of Tangerine, Canada noted that, “Successful leaders will no longer be measured just by stock price. Managing and communicating with shareholders, employees, government, community, customers will be table stakes in the future. They are talking about your business anyway. Why not be included in the conversation?”. This explains the need to incorporate social media into the lives of digital immigrants.There are two aspects of involvement in social media. Creating a presence and managing it and listening to what the customers are saying. Seven in 10 Fortune 500 CEOs have no presence on major social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+, according to a recent report by CEO.com and analytics company Domo.Among those who do, 4% have known Twitter accounts and 8% use Facebook under their own names, according to the study, which was conducted in May. By contrast, 34% of all Americans are on Twitter and 50% use Facebook. Corporate leaders such as Yahoo Inc.’s Marissa Mayer and Medtronic's Omar Ishrak appear to have struck a balance on their Twitter accounts between personal and professional.There are ways in which executives can be personally involved in managing their social media profiles. Merely setting up social media profiles and not being actively involved in managing them is reason to avoid social media altogether. It is best to manage and control your own social media profiles. Being social does not mean tasking the marketing department with setting up social media profiles with your name on them and posting content as if they were you. There are many reasons to be doing it now and the most compelling reasons are to extend the brand, grow your network and your company’s network, build thought leadership, help in online customer service, give the company a more human face, identify new customers, show that the company is innovative, give customers more insight into your brand, drive more media and analyst coverage, build positive morale with employees. Even if a CEO is not actively posting on social media, monitoring what is said by customers, investors, competitors, employees and other stakeholders is critical.A recent survey on 1000 employees reveal that 89 percent said that having a social media planning allows a company’s leadership to be more proactive than reactive, 83% employees believe that CEOs who actively engage in social media can build better connections, with customers, employees and investors, 77% said that CEO’s social media presence creates more brand transparency, 75% employees believe that CEO participation in social media leads to better leadership.Fortune 500 CEOs who do have Twitter accounts have an average of 33,250 followers, according to the study by CEO.com and Domo. A business celebrity such as former GE chief Jack Welch has 1.3 million followers. News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, who started tweeting in January, has amassed more than 326,000 followers. The media mogul has tweeted his opinions on issues such as gun control, public education and the euro crisis. News Corp. owns The Wall Street Journal.PR these days has become very personable, but there are times when executives need the help of outside expertise to help them target a larger audience, multiple platforms, analyze results, measure return on investment, sense the market pulse and map trends to be abreast with the future. That is when PR agencies, PR professionals and consultants come into play. These communication professionals specialize in bringing their expertise on various social media platforms and industry trends to the rescue of companies that need them. The time is ripe for executive-suite discussions on how to lead and to learn from people within your company, marketers outside it, and, most of all, your customers.