28 Oct Ebony Beckwith: Professional Across Three Social Media Platforms
Ebony Beckwith is Salesforce’s chief business officer and the chief of staff to one of the company’s CEOs, Marc Benioff. This is a significant role and, through social media, Beckwith has successfully demonstrated that she’s a strong leader. She uses her platforms on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram to share thoughtful advice, mentor her followers, and give insights into being in the corporate world.
Let’s take a look at Beckwith’s social media presence and examine why she is so successful in creating a loyal audience. Keep reading to find out more insights.
Sharing Professional Advice on LinkedIn
On LinkedIn, Beckwith has over 40,000 followers, a large number cultivated over the years by sharing her accomplishments and tips for being a professional in any corporate field. The most impressive aspect of Beckwith’s social media is her hashtag usage which aligns with her corresponding show and blog, #BossNotes.
Beckwith uses the hashtag #BossNotes on many of her posts that provide advice and insights on her business experience. This is an effective way to establish familiarity and continuity with followers. Having a specific hashtag that is used in a series of posts means users will look forward to your content and, in turn, engage more often and consistently. This also sets executives up as thought leaders within their specific niche.
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#BossNotes is a series of videos where Beckwith shares advice about the workplace and how to build a successful career. The episodes are posted on Salesforce. When some of this content is shared on LinkedIn, she makes use of platform-specific features, such as holding events on LinkedIn for a special episode. This is a feature executives can use to share their video content. They can hold live streaming events or post taped videos on LinkedIn to expand their reach and share content with their audience.
Beckwith has a strong LinkedIn presence because of her consistent conversations around career growth, which aligns well with what many users on the platform are interested in. Now, let’s look at how she has crafted her online personal brand on a more casual platform.
Being Authentic and Casual on Instagram
On Instagram, we encourage executives to be more open to sharing personal content and to be more casual on the platform. This is the strategy Beckwith has implemented on her account. On Instagram, she has around 2,000 followers, and shares photos with her friends, her pets, memes, and her other interests.
On Instagram, users want to be entertained and feel a connection to the lives of the people they follow. This can be beneficial for executives as well because it helps to humanize them and show a side that others can relate to. One thing readers will notice is that the Instagram post shared above features a less-than-polished photo. On Instagram, being authentic is important. As long as a photo isn’t too blurry or pixelated, photos that aren’t from a pre-planned photoshoot can create a more authentic executive persona — and it could even generate more engagement!
Beckwith’s Instagram feed primarily features photos of her, but there are also times when she shares text-based graphics, such as this one with a quote from her #BossNotes series. For executives just joining Instagram, don’t feel as if you have to post photos of yourself. After all, it depends on your comfort level! There are successful Instagram accounts featuring only illustrations and text-based graphics, for example. However, keep in mind that we mentioned authenticity is crucial. Camera-shy executives may find their posts getting fewer “likes” and comments than their peers who are showing their faces.
Exploring Her Business Life on Twitter
Beckwith is most active on Twitter, an account with over 12,000 followers. She frequently shares photos and moments from events she attends, insights about Salesforce, and articles with business advice. Her Twitter acts as a recap of her corporate life as she posts about the strides she is making to achieve her business goals while making an impact in the world at the same time.
Twitter is designed for short-form content that is consumed quickly. By giving little tidbits of information on a panel, interview, or event, Beckwith shows her followers what she is up to and positions herself as an active executive who is up-to-date within her industry. This encourages engagement and investment in her posts.
"You can use your voice, even if it shakes."
Listening to @allysonfelix share her story with Robin Washington, and some encouraging words from her brother @wesfelix ❤️ #BWOBSummit22 pic.twitter.com/zOKEMBIMRw
— Ebony Beckwith (@EbonyBeckwith) October 20, 2022
In the post above, we can see how she has adhered to social media best practices by tagging relevant people and using hashtags. Sharing timely news, like attending an event, is an effective content item for Twitter because it taps into trending hashtags that other people and companies attending the event would be using.
Interestingly, while she is most active on Twitter, she doesn’t have as many followers as her LinkedIn account. For many executives, Twitter is a simpler and more straightforward social media platform to deal with, making it easier for them to maintain a more consistent posting schedule. For business purposes, it makes sense to establish a strategic presence on both platforms.
Improvements: Stay Consistent and Active
With every social media presence, there is room for improvement to create the most effective strategy. For Beckwith, we recommend that she be more active on platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram. She is creating posts around once a month, so it can be difficult to keep followers engaged when they aren’t seeing posts very often. Posting two to three times a week helps executives maintain consistency on each follower’s feed.
Additionally, there are many great features that Beckwith can benefit from using. Video content has grown to become a key part of Instagram. The platform pushes videos to the front of followers’ feeds to encourage more engagement. Beckwith could benefit from consistently posting segments from her show, #BossTalks, to gain more reach and recognition. Repurposing videos shared on other platforms can help executives save time and effort.
Becoming an Approachable Thought Leader
As always, we encourage executives to be authentic and approachable on social media, which Ebony Beckwith has accomplished. It is a place where executives can show their values, goals, and business interests to become thought leaders in their niche. There are many benefits to each platform and ways to grow to become a business leader that consumers, followers, and employees enjoy hearing from online.
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