28 Apr 5 Reasons Why Your Executive Social Media Fails

As more executives become the public face of their company, establishing a strong social media presence for them has become increasingly important. That being said, if the process of strategically positioning a company’s executive was easy, everyone would have done it by now!

Some marketers may have tried to establish their executive’s social media program in the past, but didn’t see successful results, so they may hesitate to try again. As the saying goes, “once bitten, twice shy.” However, not positioning your company’s executives on social media is a significant missed opportunity to drive awareness, obtain leads, or even support internal initiatives such as attracting top talent in a highly competitive labor market.

Keep reading this article to learn the top five reasons why your executive social media program is failing — and see our expert tips on how to solve them!

Fail #1: Not starting off with a strong strategy

There’s a clear difference between an executive that posts on social media and a strategic, thoughtfully planned executive social media program.

More often than not, posting for the sake of posting on social media means the content isn’t aligning with key company objectives.

Here’s what marketers can do instead for their executive social media program: 

Consider the “why” — why do you want your executive to be on social media? Is it to support lead gen? Is it to promote company culture? Establish clear goals to help steer the direction of your executive social media program.

Consider the “what” — what type of content can you and/or your executive create in order to reach your business objectives?

Fail #2: Ignoring social media performance trends

There are billions of social media posts, but what most of them have in common is that they want to engage social media users. Part of the reason why an executive social media program fails is that it doesn’t take this into account.

Many marketers (and executives!) fall into the trap of being overly branded or promotional with the executive’s content or reusing too much content from the company’s social media channels.

However, our research and experience prove that there must be a balance in order to be successful on social media.

Here’s what marketers can do instead for their executive social media program: 

What type of content performs well on social media? In general, “human” content — but what does that mean? From a business perspective, this includes posts like sharing photos of an employee volunteer event or a quick snapshot at a conference the executive just attended.

While some marketers and executives may call this type of content “fluff,” it’s what drives increased impressions and engagements on social media and shouldn’t be undervalued. In between the promotional posts that talk about the business’ capabilities, products, and other branded topics, these “fluff” posts help position the executive (and by extension, their company) as being more relatable.

Remember: most social media users aren’t interested in following an executive who’s just acting as a mouthpiece for their brand. Instead, craft a uniquely distinct social media page for your company’s executive, giving users more incentive to follow both your company’s page and your executive.

Fail #3: Overlooking social media best practices

Marketers are familiar with best practices when it comes to managing their company’s social media pages — similar principles apply to an executive’s online presence. Applying best practices can help an executive’s content reach more relevant people.

When it comes to executives posting on their own with no or limited input from their marketing team, we often see the same mistakes:

• Not tagging personal or company pages properly
• Not using hashtags strategically
• Not using line breaks in long paragraphs
• Not including relevant CTAs (calls to action) to drive engagement

Here’s what marketers can do instead for their executive social media program: 

If you’re dealing with an executive with a DIY personality — in other words, they prefer to handle most or all of their social media content themselves — then consider creating a short document that outlines social media best practices. This should include topics like how many hashtags to use in a post, when to include a personal tag in a post, best practices for taking photos, and so on.

Fail #4: Not analyzing executive social media on a consistent basis

Like any marketing program, your executive social media program needs constant monitoring. Otherwise, how else will you know what’s performing well or driving toward key business objectives?

Determining the ROI of your executive’s online presence can help you and your team make better business decisions as well. For example, if you’re seeing positive traction, it may make sense to put more of your budget into enhancing your executive’s social media presence by including more spend on custom graphics and video production.

If you’re not analyzing your executive’s social media presence on a consistent basis, you won’t be able to efficiently or quickly pivot if there’s an area of the program that isn’t working.

Here’s what marketers can do instead for their executive social media program: 

Whether it’s on a monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly basis, it’s important to develop performance reports that outline key performance indicators, or KPIs. The KPIs you choose to track will depend on the “why” we mentioned before — in other words, the company goals you want your executive’s social media presence to help achieve.

Be sure to include other sections in your ongoing reports as needed. Here’s an example: when our team develops a social media strategy for our executive clients, we create a content mix with specific percentages allocated to key topics or “pillars of identity.” Over time, we find that this baseline will change as company objectives change or as social media users engage with a certain type of topic more than others.

Fail #5: Not leveraging executive social media experts

Marketers may be tempted to handle their executive’s social media program entirely on their own, and for some, they’ll have no trouble doing so. For many others who have their plates full with managing internal and company marketing, adding another digital marketing program is a daunting task.

In many cases, execs are quite familiar with digital marketing for companies, so they often try to apply the same principles to their own social media presence. However, there’s a reason why we believe an executive’s social media presence is a complement — not a substitute — for a brand’s social media presence.

Executive social media is very different from marketing for a company brand. The lack of expertise often shows when an executive’s content overlaps too much with the company’s social media feed, creating a less authentic and often boring online presence.

Here’s what marketers can do instead for their executive social media program: 

Consider areas that you can focus on and delegate the rest. Taking on too much all at once means your attention will be split, rather than focused on what it takes to make an executive’s social media program successful.

Partner with a digital marketing agency to help support your marketing team and fill in any gaps in skills and capabilities. Check out this article for more details: Executive Branding Services 101.

Develop a strong foundation for your executive social media program

If your executive has an inactive social media presence, or your previous social media program was less than successful, it’s completely fine to reexamine and relaunch. Taking into account past failures is just one step toward success!

Interested in reading success stories? Click the button below to see our case studies featuring executives in a variety of industries, including finance/asset management, tech, and more!

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