Questions CEOs Ask About Social Media

Neal Schaffer: 0:01

Welcome to maximize your social, practical and actionable advice on how your business can truly maximize your social media presence. Now, the host of maximize your social author of the recently published book of the same name, and founder of maximize social business, Neal Schaffer. Hey, this is Neal Schaffer, welcome to another episode of maximize your social apologies for the background noise. I'm back in my habit of recording this podcast wherever I am in the world. And believe it or not, I am just getting on the Golden Gate Bridge. In San Francisco, it is Sunset 5:35pm, I could not think of a more appropriate place to record this podcast. And in the back of this car on my way to the San Francisco Airport. Well, hopefully I'll catch my flight back home. I was in Sausalito, California today. And I was actually presenting on behalf of a venture capital fund company that has, you know, a meeting for the companies they've invested to help educate them on various things. And one of the things that all these companies wanted was a little bit of educational, social media. So I was there presenting, I'd say they're about 10 Different companies. They're from a variety of industries, primarily b2b, mainly CEOs, and executives. So not about the tactical use of social media, but really, the business social selling, and social media marketing use from a high end strategic level. So I always enjoy the challenges that each presentation has, for me, just like there's no cookie cutter approach to social media, there's no cookie cutter approach to speaking in social media as well, because every audience really is very, very different. But I wanted to share with you some insight from today, because there was, I always love the questions I get asked. And there was one question that was asked at the end, that said, Okay, I'm a CEO, what are the three things that I should be concerned about in my organization, as we begin, or as we get more active in social media, and I want to share with you how I responded, and everyone that's listening is going to have a slightly different response. But if I'd have three things, just from that level, and I could have talked about social business, and you know, everybody needed a seat at the table. And I don't think that most companies are there yet, I think, you know, there's an evolution that leads to becoming a social business, which starts with becoming more and more active in social media, which leads to more internal departments using social media, which then leads to the unnatural evolution of social business, which is the title of a future blog post, be having to look out for that. But one of the things I talked about was the brand, when you're tweeting, or posting, or what have you, you have a voice. And if you have read maximize your social, you know how I talk about voice being an integral part of your social media strategy, and that most companies have brand guidelines that don't cover voice. And this is critical, because a lot of the companies I spoke to were mainly small to midsize businesses, you have a marketing department, and you need to get started on social media, someone's like, Okay, I'll do it. And they may not have the experience of being on social media, from a professional perspective, they may only have from a personal perspective, and therefore, they are in essence, the voice of your brand, is the voice of that person. And that may not be the message that you want to send out to the public or your target audience. And this is a mistake that I think a lot of small and medium sized businesses have. So I think it's really point number one is really, what is the brand image that you're projecting the social media, is that voice aligned with your social media strategy? And if it isn't, then there's something you need to do about it. So that's number one is really have a strategic voice. And then we get down to well, should we have multiple voices? Should the CEO tweet? And there's really no one answer to that, because there really is no cookie cutter approach. It really comes down to your brand, and what is important about your brand, but there are a variety approaches, there are some brands that just post as their brand, and they get away with it, because they're the voice of the brand, you know, in social is on brand. There are others that have you know, avatars. And these are the people that are tweeting from the brand, or they say who the person is, there are others have CEOs and other executives tweeting, and what have you, you know, you need to find the best solution for your brand and your particular objectives for using social media. The second point that I brought up was that was sort of the the proactive voice. Next one is sort of the reactive, and it goes as a no brainer that you got to be listening. Now, if you're a huge brand, you're already listening. But if you're a smaller brand, you may not be listening, you may not be listening for the right keywords, or you're only looking at mentions instead of doing a keyword search for your company name. And that's really critical. Because, you know, what's the definition of a social media crisis? And there's someone say, Well, you know, unless the social media crisis really affects the bottom line of the company outside of social media, it's not really a crisis, but I don't want to add fire to the debate. But I do want to say that most of the negative things that happen in social media can be avoided just by responding and responding quickly and responding appropriately, and taking the conversation offline. And we've seen it you know, time in and time out And it starts with just, you know, monitoring what's being said. So if you're not checking in on a daily basis, you you miss out on the opportunity. And it just, you don't need a full time employee to do it just you know, check in two or three times a day, just to make sure that there aren't any things that you should be dealing with. There's obviously enterprise grade software solutions that can help you with that, such as radiant six is a great example. But you know, even HootSuite, if you use it properly, or a marketing suite, or a Sprout Social can can help you dissolve any potential problem that happens just because you were able to catch and respond to the message. It's something that, you know, for business to business brands, I don't think it's as important but for consumer facing brands, it is important, and it bears reminding, especially for CEOs that still think social media is a scary and dangerous place, which I suppose it has the potential to be. But obviously, there's a lot more potential upside to social than the downside. And that's why everybody is so actively investing in it. So that's sort of, you know, your, your brand voice, you're projecting your brand of, you know, making sure that anything negative you're responding to. And then the third one was really, if you think about the expenses that you have in social media, they're mainly people related. But there are a growing number of tools. You know, I think marketers are just fascinating with tools. And with social media, it's not about the tools, it's about the people, it's about engaging. And if there's a tool that can help you scale in a relevant way, why not, but I think that a lot of marketers are just infatuated with the tools and the tools, cost money, and don't necessarily help them be more effective. So I told the CEO, hey, look at the tools you're using that they may not be expensive. But really, are those tools helping you achieve your business objectives? Are they making you more efficient, demand that an explanation be turned on that? Because I find sometimes that's not always the case. And I gave two examples, one of a friend who works at a fortune 500 company that was using radiant six, and stop using them because he said, You know what, we don't see any ROI from from what we're using it for another company, they may still be using one of those social media monitoring solutions, but they, you know, they created these internal reports that were being sent out to executives that just weren't being looked at never got any feedback, what's the purpose? What is the objective that it's helping us meet as an organization, right? I don't think that you should just throw money at everything in anything in social media, and that every tool is going to help you become more efficient, because you're still going to do engage with people, you're still going to need to find people engage with them respond to what have you. And for that, a very, very inexpensive tool like a Hootsuite marketing suite or Sprout Social, we'll help you achieve that. So those were sort of my three nuggets of wisdom for the CEOs in the audience. And there's a lot of different ways you could take the conversation. And if you were asked just off the cuff that question, and you're a social media professional, it's it's not the easiest answer, as you can imagine, I, I tried to do my best. And I hope that that gives you some insight as to, you know, the CEO perspective of social media, you know, some of the other questions, if you are curious, if you are very active on Twitter, as an executive or even on the other platforms, how do you match the delegating and slash automation versus your own individual engagement, and I have the same challenge, you cannot respond to every single tweet. Once you engage a lot. You engagement breeds engagement, right? And humans can't scale. But it's always recognizing those important people. And always making sure that you personally engage with them, I think is really one of the critical things that you need to make sure you do even if you delegate some responsibility that what's important comes from you. And that's the same for any social network, I believe. So that is it for another episode of maximize your social I thank you as always for listening. And well, we hit some traffic here in San Francisco. Anybody knows after the Golden Gate Bridge, you got to go through the city and I don't know if I'm gonna make this airplane. So I may even be recorded another podcast tonight. I have to wait for my plan. But anyway, I wish you a great day, wherever you are in the world, and best of luck with maximizing your social Bye Bye, everybody. Thanks for listening to maximize your social. We appreciate your iTunes subscriptions, ratings and comments. If you would like to appear on this show or recommend content, please contact Neal Schaffer at Neal at maximize your social.com Thanks for listening and have a great day.