20 Jan 9 Ways to Support Your Executive’s Social Media Presence
While many businesses today are on social media, executives on social media can help their company reach key business objectives through their own strategic online presence. Marketers can use a variety of different platform tools in order to effectively promote their executives and position them in front of an even larger audience.
Read our nine tips on how your company’s social media accounts can improve executive visibility.
How To Improve Executive Visibility On LinkedIn
Many companies have established their presence on LinkedIn, but the same can be said for executives as well. Our findings show that out of the 352 Fortune 500 CEOs on social media, 97% of them have a LinkedIn account. Here’s how marketers can leverage their company’s LinkedIn content to improve executive visibility and positioning.
- Reshare an executive’s post
Many social media sites — LinkedIn included — offer a variety of ways to reshare someone else’s post. For company pages, this means occasionally resharing posts from its executives. Resharing a post boosts its visibility. Those who follow the executive might not follow the company’s LinkedIn page, so by resharing a post, marketers are increasing content reach to ensure more users are seeing the post.
Here’s our expert tip: when resharing a post, always include an original comment. This is more valuable than resharing a post without a comment. Why? It adds a unique element to your post and allows you to add more content to the original post. For example, if you’re resharing your executive’s LinkedIn poll, add a CTA (call to action) as an original comment to boost engagement.
- Boost executive visibility through paid ads
Marketers know that one of the most effective ways to boost visibility is through a targeted ad campaign. However, having access to a LinkedIn Page (like a company page) is an important part of setting up a new ad campaign. What can be done to boost an executive’s social media visibility?
One method is to take a screenshot of your executive’s post and use it as an image in an organic post for your company’s page. That way, you can sponsor the company’s post, which boosts the visibility of your executive (and, as a bonus, shows that they have a LinkedIn account as well).
- Tag your executives in company posts
One of the easiest ways to show that your company’s executive is on LinkedIn is to add their tag using the “@” symbol. If properly tagged, their name becomes a clickable link to their profile.
Be sure to only include an executive’s tag in the post if it makes sense. For example, if a new interview was recently published on your company’s website and it features the executive, it makes sense to include their tag.
How To Improve Executive Visibility On Instagram
Instagram isn’t just a social media platform for B2C executives. More executives across different industries, including B2B, are making use of this platform to connect with their company’s audience. Marketers can support their executives on Instagram in these three ways.
- Reshare an executive’s Instagram Story
An Instagram Story is a popular content format. What makes it different from in-feed posts is that Stories disappear 24 hours after they’ve been posted. Because of this relatively short timeframe, company profiles on Instagram will want to strategically share their executive’s Story content in order to maximize the number of users who will see the content.
While Stories disappear after 24 hours, one way to keep them on your profile forever is to include them in a Story Highlight. These are folders arranged in a row below the Instagram bio.
- Tag your executive in Instagram photos
Yes, we’re back to tagging, but that just shows how important it is to make use of this nifty feature! On Instagram, there are a variety of ways to tag an executive. If your company account is sharing a photo and it includes the executive, you can add a tag right on the photo itself. Marketers can also include a tag in the post copy using the “@” symbol.
Properly tagging is an effective way to show users that your company’s executive has an Instagram presence.
- Use the Instagram profile link to boost executive visibility on social media
Most Instagram users know that only one link can be added to the profile’s bio section. However, there’s a way to work around this and that’s by using third-party platforms, such as Linktree or Campsite. As an example, check out this Instagram profile for Slynd® (drospirenone). Clicking the link in the bio opens up a new page with additional links.
How can marketers use their company’s link to boost executive visibility? Add your executive’s Instagram profile as one of the links (or other platforms they’re active on). Whenever a user is looking at the list, they’ll see that the executive also has a social media presence.
How To Improve Executive Visibility On TikTok
Lastly, how can marketers promote their executives on TikTok? While the number of CEOs on TikTok doesn’t come close to those using LinkedIn (yet), Influential Executive CEO Elissa Liu predicts that more and more younger entrepreneurs will use TikTok to share company-related content over the next few years. Here are three ways marketers can improve their executives’ visibility on the popular video-sharing platform.
- Invite executives to be in videos for the company’s TikTok page
Is your executive not on TikTok? No problem! Marketers can still create videos featuring them as a way to boost their visibility. Video content has become increasingly important with TikTok’s popularity setting trends that influence other social media platforms as well, like Instagram.
Consider creating a video series focused on an executive at your company where they share thought leadership content. It’s also a way to dip their toes into the social media world and remind them that their digital presence can benefit the company.
- Don’t forget to promote your executive
If your company’s executive isn’t on TikTok but they are on another platform, don’t forget to promote their account. For example, in relevant content, marketers may want to end a TikTok video by saying, “Don’t forget to follow (CEO name) on LinkedIn.”
- Repost content from your executives
Lastly, just because your executive prefers to use another platform doesn’t mean you can’t boost their visibility on TikTok. Sharing content cross-platform is a popular practice, whether it’s posting a screenshot of a Tweet on Facebook or sharing an image of a Reddit thread on Instagram.
This practice helps your executive’s content reach an entirely new audience that might not be on the platforms your executive is on.
Support Executives With Your Company’s Social Media Presence
Here are some more important tips to keep in mind:
- Don’t reshare every single post your executive posts online. This creates too much overlap between the two pages.
- Share posts that have a strategic purpose. For example, if the company’s CEO shared a post about an award they recently won that may not directly relate to the company, share it! This improves executive positioning.
- Don’t use the same language or hashtags as your executive’s original post when resharing. Add something unique from the company’s overall perspective.
You may have noticed some trends in the list above — tagging and resharing content. Both of these methods are widely used across different social media platforms and help promote content to new audiences. Adhering to platform best practices, being strategic about what types of content to share, and creating engaging content are ways marketers can establish an executive social media presence that drives toward clear business objectives.
Want another example of how executives on social media can support company messaging? Click the button below to read a case study of how we supported sales leaders at one company.
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