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Regardless of whether you approve of President Donald Trump’s tweets, one thing is certain—he’s drawing attention to the power of social media. Over the past five years, the number of CEOs jumping on the social media bandwagon has dramatically increased. Corporate leaders—especially large company CEOs—are finally realizing what their employees and customers already know: Using social technologies to engage with customers, suppliers and their own employees enables companies to be more adaptive and agile.
Travis Kalanick, co-founder and chief executive officer of Uber Technologies Inc., issues an apology... [+]
While the number of social CEOs is on the upswing, more of our company’s leaders need to cross over into the social networking realm. For example, a recent Marketingland study found that among the top 100 global brands, only 31 CMOs or top-level marketing execs had active Twitter accounts. Even more surprising, only Apple, GE, HP, Coca-Cola, SAP and IBM have CMOs with 10,000+ followers.
The biggest rewards are available for companies whose commitment to social media comes from the top. With benefits like better company branding, enhanced corporate personality, customer engagement and even better crisis management, it’s time for CEOs to get social.
Brand your company. Want to build excitement and spread brand awareness for your company? Create a Twitter or Facebook account where you consistently share your company’s messaging, success stories, news and even rewards for customers. BRANDfog’s 2016 Social Media Survey, which polled 500 U.S. employees in diverse companies, discovered that 75% of respondents believe that C-suite social media engagement makes a brand seem more honest and trustworthy.
Jack Dorsey, CEO of both Twitter and Square, exhibited a great example of reinforcing your brand on social media when he tweeted to the crowd attending the 2016 Coachella festival. He tweeted that attendees would be able to use either Apple or Android devices to make purchases, through Square, at every single vendor. No need to risk losing your debit or credit cards—just use your phone. At Fishbowl, we’ve created a Facebook group for our customers to interface directly with our software engineers. This allows customers to send complaints, praise, ideas and requests for new features to our programmers through a forum the entire world can see.
Establish your personality. Just like Dorothy in “Wizard of Oz,” your customers want to see the man or woman behind the curtain. The best, easiest way to do that is through a more personal approach to social media. Break free of a strictly corporate persona and let your customers and employees learn a little bit more about you.
The 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer shows us that the “general population is interested in a CEO’s personal values, obstacles they have overcome, their personal success story and their education and how it shaped them, among other non-business updates.”
As I have embraced social media, gravitating toward Twitter and LinkedIn, I interact with current and potential customers almost daily. I also enjoy sharing not only bits of business news, leadership advice and motivating inspiration, but I also enjoy unveiling pieces of my personal life. Whether it’s photos of Fishbowl’s Day of Service, my favorite Teslas, my Forbes articles or snapshots of my beautiful grandkids, I’m not afraid to get personal in the twitterverse.
Engage with customers and employees. It’s time for CEOs to join in the conversation their customers are having online. In fact, many social media users are demanding it, whether it’s praising a company for a welcomed policy change or calling out corporations over customer service issues.
Search Engine Watch reports that 72 percent of Twitter users expect responses from brands they follow within one hour. “In this environment, you don’t want to wait 48 hours before responding to a question on your Facebook page. It’s important to have someone manning your social media accounts at all times to ensure prospects and customers get the answers they’re looking for.”
Sure, as CEOs we are over scheduled and often live and breathe the business. While we may want to take a break and unplug from time to time, we still need to maintain a digital connection to employees and customers.
“Each morning, I start my day by looking through a Twitter feed that I set up to monitor any mentions of my company,” said Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes in his Fast Company feature. “On a typical morning, I see plenty of raw, unfiltered commentary from users on what we’re doing right and, of course, what we’re doing wrong. … Getting insight like this used to require professional focus groups and analysis. Social media now gives CEOs a direct pipeline into what their customers are thinking and doing—in real time, with no spin from publicists or middle managers. Better still, it takes minimal time and effort. A minute of flipping through a Twitter stream, and I have my finger on the pulse of our customers.”
Taking just five minutes a day to catch up on your social feed will become valuable time well spent.
Field crisis management. We’ve seen it happen on many occasions: Corporate CEOs taking to social media to respond to company criticism, personal attacks and even embarrassing situations.
Take, for example, the recent news from Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. After an argument with one of his Uber drivers was caught on video and broadcast to millions, Kalanick humbly responded in a very frank, open letter to the public on the company’s blog. Kalanick’s transparency and rapid response to the video was a great example of how CEOs can quickly—almost instantaneously—respond to crisis situations. Errors can be corrected, apologies offered and inaccuracies reversed, all with a quickly posted tweet or status update.
If you want to solidify your company’s branding, share some of your personality, engage with customers in real time and better react to the occasional crisis, take a few minutes and set up your social media profile.
