Alan Draper
Recently, I read an article from Vocus titled: Good Things Happen When CEOs Tweet. It was a good summary of how the CEO of Vocus, Rick Rudman, took the time to respond to a user who had liked the video tour of their new location. A conversation began between her and Rick and within a week, the user, Janine, was at their location taking a tour that Rick himself gave!If that doesn’t show the power of social media, then I don’t know what does!
I think what made this whole interaction so successful was the fact that the CEO himself was tweeting to Janine, it wasn’t a social media manager or some employee, it was the CEO himself!
That’s extremely rare these days. Most small, medium or large companies want to be engaged in social media, but feel as if the owners, CEOs or presidents just can’t afford to take the time to break away from the hustle and bustle of everyday to spend a few minutes engaging with their audience online.
It’s perfectly fine to have a social media team to manage the day-to-day happenings of the online world. Because let’s face it, there really is far too much to handle online for a CEO to be able to do it all by himself WHILE trying to run a business.
However, when it comes right down to it, it makes a person feel awfully special if they know that the CEO himself is taking the time out of their day to engage with them.
In order to manage and keep up to date with what’s happening in your community each day, here are a few suggestions to CEOs:
1. If you have a social media team, ask them to give you a daily summary of any mentions (through Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube video likes, etc). Then, as the CEO, you can decide what you personally should reply to and what your team should reply to. Make sure you clearly express that it’s YOU speaking. At the end of every tweet/Facebook status/youtube comment/etc, sign your name so that people know it’s really you.
2. If you don’t have a social media team, or you think they might be too busy to give you a daily summary, insert daily reminders into your calendar to check Twitter, Facebook, etc. You can insert as many reminders as you need. It could just be once a day, but could be as many as 3 times a day. Just depends on your overall schedule. Make sure you have the reminder on repeat, so that you don’t have to keep going in and creating a new reminder. And be sure to let your team know exactly when you’re going to be on so that they’re not trying to chat while you’re trying to chat. Again, make sure you’re open about who’s tweeting and make yourself known.
3. If you think setting reminders just isn’t for you, make it a habit to check it FIRST thing in the morning and LAST thing before you go home. I’ll repeat, make it a HABIT. That is the most important aspect about anything related to social media. Everything needs to become a habit and habits take time to build. So be patient with yourself and be realistic about your time and availability.
Bottom line:
We live in a world where people truly want to engage with the CEOs and celebrities themselves, they don’t want to always be talking to a social media team. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t hire a social media team, but it is highly recommended, especially if you’re expanding and need full time people to monitor and respond quicker than a CEO might be able to handle.
If you don’t know how to use social media, get your staff to teach you! If you don’t have anyone close by that really knows, hire someone! Be proactive in your online presence.
However, I am saying that it’s important to at least have a presence and make the people know that you’re not ignorant to what’s going on and you truly care about your customers/clients/fans.
Even if it’s ONE tweet a day, that’s better than nothing!
Any other suggestions you have for CEOs and social media?
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Alan Draper.
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Thanks Morgan! And great suggestions. Remarkable things happen when people engage!
You can say that, again, Frank! :) Thanks for commenting!