15 Feb Creating A Social Media Presence For Busy Executives

There are many benefits to strategically positioning your company’s CEO and other business leaders on social media, such as increased brand awareness, improved credibility, and building consumer loyalty.

However, launching an executive social media program takes a lot of time and effort. There are many one-time and ongoing activities involved. Developing a marketing strategy, creating content, community management — the list goes on!

The good news is that it’s possible for marketers to build their executive’s social media presence with little to no input from their executive. In this article, we share tips on how to work with a “hands-off” type of executive.

Understanding the “Hands-off” Executive

What is a “hands-off” executive when it comes to executive social media? These are business leaders who don’t have the time or interest in being a major part of their social media program. Instead, they entrust their online presence to their in-house marketing team. In many cases, these marketers will partner with external specialized executive social media agencies that can provide support in several ways.

Hands-off executives may or may not realize the importance of having a strategic online presence, but at the end of the day, it’s their digital marketer who does understand and is the one getting the social media program started.

Is Your Executive “Hands Off” When It Comes To Social Media?

Before launching a strategic social media presence for your executive, we recommend speaking with the executive that you want to position online. Understanding their reasoning for why they want to be “hands off” when it comes to their social media can help you plan ahead.

Does your executive want to be less involved because of time constraints? Is it a lack of interest? Or privacy concerns? Depending on their reasoning, they might not actually be as hands-off as you first thought! Instead, they may want to take an active role in their social media presence but have other concerns weighing on their minds.

Tip #1: Setting Executive Social Media Objectives

Some executives may have general goals in mind that marketers can use to inform their overall social media strategy. We mentioned a few goals earlier, like brand awareness. Positioning the executive (and, by extension, the company) as a thought leader within the industry is another goal that many business leaders have.

That being said, it’s likely that the executives aren’t too interested or simply don’t have the time to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) for their own program, but understanding some of their key goals can help marketers fill in the blanks.

A completely hands-off executive might leave the social media objectives to the marketer, who should already have a firm understanding of company goals and the type of messaging they want to convey to their online audience.

Tip #2: Establishing an Effortless Review Process

When working with a hands-off executive, it’s important to understand their level of involvement. For example, we’ve worked with some executive clients who were only involved during the early stage interviews and strategy building, with their in-house marketing team taking over the review responsibilities afterward. Some executives are even more “hands-off,” and may not be looking at their social media at all!

Fully hands-off executives: 

Executives that are fully hands-off present a number of advantages for digital marketers. These types of executives typically aren’t picky about their content’s tone of voice (though marketers should still try to align the executive’s online persona with their real-life personality). This type of executive is more focused on their social media presence driving towards specific business objectives. One challenge, however, is that they tend to focus entirely on branded/business-related content and may not understand the value of posting more personal content, such as a photo of themselves at a recent conference. We recommend setting expectations early with your executive about building a more holistic social media content mix and the types of content that perform well online.

Partially hands-off executives:

Some executives may still want to take a quick look at their content calendar before posts go out on their social media profiles. This is where it helps to have a structured multi-stage review process. For example, if you’re working with an executive social media agency, have the in-house marketing team review the content first before it’s passed to their CEO for a final quicker review.

Tip #3: Provide Social Media Updates

Executive social media is an investment. This means that while some executives may be hands-off when it comes to reviewing their social media posts, they may want to be involved when it comes to performance reviews.

Even for fully hands-off executives, marketers will still want to share monthly or quarterly updates on how the executive social media program is performing. Keep the updates short and simple, focusing on the key goals that marketers know would be of interest to their busy executive. This helps showcase the value of establishing and managing a social media presence for them. Positive performance could open the doors to strategically positioning other business leaders at the company.

Also, be sure to make the best use of your executive’s availability to address any concerns or feedback about their content, and to align their social media posts with any new business objectives. As the executive’s online presence grows, marketers will always want to look into other ways to boost social media performance, such as leveraging LinkedIn’s thought leader ads. Read our guide below!

Promote Your Executives: A Guide to LinkedIn’s Thought Leader Ads!