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Should CEOs take on the role of a chief advertiser? The answer might surprise you – executives who properly utilize social media have an incredible impact on the business they receive and how their employees feel about coming to work each day.
What Benefits Does Being On Social Media Offer?
- Personal Connections: The sad truth is that many people feel that corporations are impersonal behemoths that are bent on making as much money as possible. Being a social SEO offers a more personal way of connecting with the people who might be buying your products – and they do it in a way that customers are far more comfortable with.
- Employee Relations: As the leader of your company, your opinion has value – so you’ll need to be careful about what you say. However, imagine this kind of scenario – Bob’s been working overtime for the last month, putting together a creative collection of images that you’re going to use for a major advertising campaign on Instagram. Well, you’ve got your own Instagram account so you can see what your potential customers are seeing, and you walk into the office one day to see that things are finally up and running. Bob is going to love it if his manager lets him know that you saw the campaign and like what he did. With just a few minutes, you’ll be able to give a hard-working employee a tangible sense of reward and make them feel that all the effort is worthwhile… and that’s the kind of thing that motivates people to do their best.
- A Professional Platform: Your social media accounts are a great way to talk about content within the industry, reveal major plans, and generally talk to an elite audience. You’ll stand out from the crowd and ultimately start to attract more business to your company as your following grows and your opinions are given more weight.
What Are The Problems?
The biggest problem, of course, is that you probably don’t have the time to dive into social media whenever you want – you literally hire people to do that for you. However, you don’t actually have to post things when you create them. Scheduling posts in advance – and using automatic software to put them up – allows you to create a long buffer zone that ensures a steady stream of content will be posted even when you’re busy with actually running your company.
You’ll also have to develop the right type of personality for use online – and it needs to be distinct from what the rest of your company is doing. To succeed in social media, most companies need a steady stream of entertaining and interesting content. However, that’s not what you should be doing – don’t try too hard to be funny, don’t be rude, and above all, avoid discussing controversial subjects. Nothing will ruin you – or your company – faster than an insensitive statement you’ll never be able to forget.
How Can You Get Started?
You should already have people who are experts in social media. Talk to them about your desire to set up a CEO page, and have a few meetings about your goals and what you actually want to accomplish. Most CEOs put up pages on LinkedIn, for example, but that may not be right for you. Listen to your people, have one of them proofread your content before it’s posted, and don’t be afraid to see what other CEOs are doing with their own social media pages. You won’t become (or remain) an industry leader just by copying what others are doing, but there are lessons you can learn before you get started, especially if you haven’t used social media very much in the past.
Try to give yourself at least three months of preparation time so you can ensure that you have plenty of content and a good plan in place for when your page goes live.
Finally, remember that social media shows its true value over time. As a CEO, you can expect to be noticed more easily than many other kinds of accounts, but it may take half a year or more before you’ve got the kind of following you really want to have. Don’t stress out if growth seems slow – it always does, and your tech team can help you figure out whether or not things are actually wrong (and what to do about it if there is a real problem).
