This article points out

"A lot of resources are spent on a brand or company's social media. Why isn't more time spent on the social media accounts of a business's executives? Data shows it is one of the few strategic moves that can simultaneously positively impact hiring, retention, sales, and company valuation.

More than ever before, customers are making buying decisions based on the positive online presence of a company's leaders. In fact, 77% of consumers prefer to make purchases from a company where executives are active on social media."

I'm sure many of you are reading this and coming up with excuses if you are a senior executive why you don't want to be on social media, time is a factor we often hear as an excuse.

Or you think, yadda, yadda, yadda.

In this article, I have empirical evidence that CEOs on Linkedin raise 20% more funding than CEOs that are not and CEOs on Twitter raise 5% more funding than CEOs that don't.

If your CEO isn’t on social media, you’ll never raise money from VCs 

Back to the article

"A CEO's reputation is directly responsible for 44% of a company's market value, and the ones who proactively and strategically share on social media realize it starts with knowing your audience."

Learnings

Having been a CEO now for my 7th year and run a business advising CEOs about your online presence, these are my learnings

1. Yes you need to make time to do this yourself.  Being authentic is key.  You cannot outsource authenticity.

As a business you will be gaining

  • Visibility – recognition in the marketplace
  • Trusted advisor status
  • Recruit and retain the best talent
  • Employee engagement & shared sense of purpose
  • Pipeline, growth and new customers

This is a business imperative, not something you do half hearted.

2. Because of the points above you must see work on social media as business critical and block out time, as you would any business critical process.

If this isn't enough, this is a competitive advantage and again must be treated us such.

3. Don't forget this isn't about posting and hoping.  You need to have a clear methodology behind your processes, similar to what we provide in our "social selling and influence training and coaching".

Every post should be part of a strategy and be driving to the measures above.  Putting it simply, social should be driving conversations, why?  Because conversations create sales.

If you post something, it should be driving conversations and should be measured. 

Want to know more about social selling, check out my new book

"social selling techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition".

In this brand new edition, I have updated all the text, I have also got 15 practitioners, so people who are doing this already to explain how they are get (practical) business benefit. From the CEO that has been running a digital business for over 18 months to sales leaders who use social selling every day.  

Articles on how these business have and are implementing digital, from Mercer, Telstra Purple, Ring Central, Cyberhawk, Namos, Ericsson, Crux Consulting, DLA Ignite and more.

What does Mark Schaefer, Marketing guru think of the book "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition"? watch the video here

It's available on Amazon worldwide.  Link to Amazon.com here and Amazon.co.uk here.