The Social Executive

How to Master Social Media and Why It's Good for Business

Dionne Kasian-Lew

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780730312895
• eBook ISBN: 9780730312901
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Social media is not about social media. It's about leadership and connections.

Billions of conversations are taking place in social networks every day. But for busy executives and business owners, time constraints make it hard to dedicate time to demystifying these communication opportunities. In The Social Executive, readers are given evidence-based, data-driven strategies for mastering social media, and using it to enable business success. This book's easy, straightforward, practical style ensures that you will gain a solid working platform in the shortest amount of time possible. The focus is on the reasons why social media is important for executives, and how it aligns perfectly with business strategies.

The Social Executive is for analogue people who know they need to be digital but need a guiding hand - the book is a safety net - it's saying - we will guide you there - we will tell you why - we will tell you how - let us help you to remain relevant and become more influential - it's about human communication.

It gives the tips and tools to adapt to new online environments, and the confidence to use them to build credibility, authority deeper and new business relationships.

Written by Dionne Kasian-Lew, an expert who has advised many executives on the topic of corporate social media use, this resource also helps professionals pinpoint the most important social networks to invest time in, and explores which platforms are best suited for various communication goals.

• Brings together strategy and concrete actions, so can learn not only the most rewarding approaches, but how best to carry them out
• Delves into the benefits of a strong presence on the most popular social networks, including Twitter, LinkedIn, SlideShare, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+ and YouTube
• Presents hard evidence that shows the positive results of investing time and energy in social networks
• Focuses on the most important aspects of social networks that can be learned in a short period, and is designed for busy professionals

Social networks represent a powerful way to make connections and draw attention and interest to your company. This resource can help you hit the ground running and become social media savvy efficiently and effectively.

Part I
WHY IS SOCIAL MEDIA IMPORTANT?

Social media has been called a fad, a distraction for teenagers or at best a pleasant but unprofitable waste of time. The truth is it has introduced a dramatic shift in the way we engage that is turning business on its head. For those who know how to use it properly, social media offers an unparalleled business opportunity and is critical for success in an interconnected world.

Read the following chapters to learn:

• how big the digital economy already is, how it will continue to grow and how you can leverage that for business success
• six damaging myths that have deterred executives from adopting social media and facts that will change your mind about it
• how to evolve beyond traditional management thinking to a social growth mindset
• how much social absenteeism costs professionals
• legal reasons why every executive must understand social media, even if they don’t like it and don’t wish to
• how to leverage social media for professional development and career growth.

CHAPTER 1
Gargantuan and growing: the digital economy

The current focus on social media has many leaders wondering about its impact on their careers and businesses. They are asking:

• Is this a structural change or just a fad?
• Does it impact the whole economy or just particular industries?
• Does it apply across a business or just to sales?
• Is it the right time to invest in social platforms?
• What’s it worth?
• How, if at all, does social media contribute to productivity and the bottom line?

Let me paint the picture.

How connected are we?

The number of people online has doubled since 2007 to 2.55 billion, and 91 per cent of them use social or mobile networks. That’s an awe-inspiring number, but it’s just the start of a steep trajectory.

More than half of the world has yet to come on board, but they are doing so now, to the tune of eight new users a second (that means around 40 new people came online while you were reading that sentence). In developing countries in particular, new users are skipping the path we took through analogue and hardwired technologies and going straight to digital, mobile, social.

Just as you’ve never lived in a world without cars and think of the horse-and-cart as historically quaint, so billions have never lived without hyper-connection. Would you tether a horse to a cart? Take it to a meeting across town? Could you even do so if you wanted to? I imagine not. So why do we expect others will want to connect with us on antiquated systems?

There are more devices connected to the web than there are people on Earth, using more kinds of devices than ever before. We are using smartphones, tablets, laptops, wearable technologies — and that’s before we get started on the emerging ‘Internet of Things’ that connects everything to everything else and everyone to it. According to industry analyst firm IDC, the installed base for the Internet of Things will grow to approximately 212 billion devices by 2020; a number that includes 30 billion connected devices. IDC sees this growth driven largely by intelligent systems that will be installed and collect data — across both consumer and enterprise applications.

And we’re doing all of this connecting on the run. Mobile has freed us from desktops and landlines, and we read, think, react, reach out, share and shop when we want to and wherever we are. Like it or not, this has created a new paradigm — immediacy. The impact is already dramatic, but like the number of users and the degree of interconnection it will grow. Here’s why.

In 1998 there were 38 million households with broadband internet. Now 1.2 billion people can access it through their mobile phones. The World Bank says three-quarters of the world is on mobile. That’s startling when you consider that it is most often used for social activities and accounts for one in every ten e-dollars spent in the US.

The combination of interconnectivity and mobility changes everything.

We no longer simply go to a company’s website to read about their product. In most cases we don’t know they exist, and we don’t care. Some suggest there are 1.75 billion pages on the internet. If we know the name of a company and its URL (web address), and can be bothered to go straight there, then they’d already be a pretty important brand for us. But we’d still head online to compare their prices and read recent reviews or, more to the point, find out more through social networking via Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, which have now overtaken search.

How do we connect?

So how do we find what we want, and what has being in social media got to do with finding it? Mostly we do one of two things:

1. We Google it (or use another search engine).
2. We ask friends.

Our digital footprint dramatically impacts the results of both.

We Google it

When we want something we don’t just Google a business name. This is one of the first mistakes many businesses make. They believe we’re going to sit down at a desk and type their name into a computer, read what they tell us, believe it, and cough up or turn up.

It simply does not work that way. Now we Google as we think. We’re having a coffee, something pops into our mind and we type that into Google: ‘Is there really more sugar in yoghurt than ice-cream?’

And because you are different from me and Google knows from previous searches what you like or from your IP address what country you are in, even if we put in the same question we will get different results. Google contextualises our search. This is called personalisation. On the upside, the results are tailored, which is helpful in a noisy world with overwhelming choice. On the downside, this can narrow your view.

Say an elderly parent lands up in hospital one weekend when their health takes an abrupt turn for the worse. We are advised that they will require constant professional medical care. Suddenly we need to find somewhere for them to stay. Do we know if they have a will? Insurance? Who manages their affairs?

An initial search may look something like this:

Mum sick 82 years needs home 24/7 professional medical care within 25 km Camberwell.

That’s if we’re thinking straight. We don’t plug ‘The Wonderful Hospice Company’ into Google. We don’t know it exists.

And the first company that comes up from this kind of search (called a longtail search because of the length of the question) and is served up on the front page of Google (the only page that counts) is the one we’re going to check out.

To get on the front page, that company:

• has a web presence
• has a website optimised for the keywords that people use to search for the services it offers (this is called SEO or search engine optimisation), which is likely to place ‘24/7 medical care’ (their need) above ‘wonderful, caring staff and lovely grounds’ (our idea of who we are)
• generates positive recommendations, feedback and conversations in social media networks and the online forums that lead to ratings; social media properties often land on the first page of search results
• puts out good content about their products and services (called content marketing), because this contributes to visibility.

The algorithms that connect you to the information you’re looking for take all those elements into account.

You can have the flashiest website in the world but Google is looking for something more: it’s trying to pull in real responses from real people because this is what makes your search worthwhile.

And 89 per cent of consumers conduct research using search engines. That makes being a part of those conversations, including managing any complaints that might emerge, very, very important.

Not being there is a problem. Being there if people don’t like you is still a problem. So even on the most basic, technical level, being online and engaged has a great impact. But that’s just the start.

We ask friends

Here’s another reason why participating in social media networks is important. People talk about brands and purchases all the time. And we trust those recommendations.

Personal recommendations have always been important — that’s not new. We’re far more likely to trust the opinion of someone we know than an anonymous head of marketing. But what makes those recommendations important is that in other areas trust is on the decline. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, which has measured trust on a number of dimensions over many years, there’s a clear trend. We don’t much trust journalists, politicians or CEOs, and over time we have come to trust them less and less.

Although the findings vary, the essence is that we don’t trust companies to tell us the truth either. Was this always the case? Possibly, but couple that with the fact that accessibility has taken away the need for gatekeepers and it’s clear that the days are gone when you could declare from a position of authority that something was so because you said it was.

So who do we trust?

The answer is friends. I am far more likely to go to a café because someone whose opinion I value went there and thought the coffee was good than because of the café’s own claims. The interesting thing about trust is that it makes no difference whether the relationship is in a p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Chronology
• About the author
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: Why is social media important?
• Part II: How do I use it?
• Conclusion
• #SOMETHINGMORE
• Index
• So, what's next?
• Learn more with practical advice from our experts
• End User License Agreement