Public Relations these days is even more important for a CEO than it used to be. On a personal level, the craft of PR is how we manicure our public persona.
We have often suggested in media training sessions, when discussing the qualities of spokespeople and their importance in promoting a company or product, that a spokesperson contributes about 40% to the value of a campaign (a good spokesperson over 60%). The rest comes from policy(content), strategy and tactics. Before you challenge this slightly unusual stat., consider how important a leader is to a political campaign, and why campaigns have become presidential in style……
So as spokesperson, you as CEO are the company brand – or at least an integral part of it.
So how does social media impact on this? We think the modern CEO must now rely on social media, not as an option but as a necessity. We can no longer kid ourselves that we can hide, or run a business incognito. The virtual landscape contains an ever growing library of everything that we have done and said, or has been said about us – some of it may be hidden, such as our spending habits; but it’s there in credit card and banking histories, waiting to emerge. Read more of that here.
What this means is that a forward thinking CEO must use social media as a way to manicure her/his brand – his/her social landscape. It’s not OK to let it happen on its own. Or worse, without your knowledge.
This puts a context around why we should follow people like Jeff Bulla, below. It is a learning process, and people like Jeff have become our teachers.
It takes time, which is an added pressure we didn’t have. But we now exist in two spheres, the real and the virtual. Managing our image, managing our public persona, or public relations, just became more complicated.
Jeff Bulla: The Modern Executives Essential Social Media Toolkit Plus [INFOGRAPHIC]
Posted: 18 Sep 2011 04:39 PM PDT
Privacy on-line is fast disappearing as search engines and social networks publish information in an instant. Conversations about people and brands are searchable with granular advanced search functions that include dates and specific media such as images and videos.
In the last century(as far back as the ancient web time of 1995) there was no Google or Bing to help you find information easily on the web. Finding people or brands using primitive search engine technology at the time such as AltaVista was rather hit and miss and finding something relevant was often buried as far back as page 20 of the search results.
Now to find something about a person you only need to put their name into Google and up will come their LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter profiles.
You are Now an Online Brand!
Hate it or love it, you are an online brand whether you like it or not. Sometimes those results on page one of a Google search will produce what other people are saying about you on their blogs or Facebook pages. In other words if you are not actively participating in your own on-line PR then you have handed over your public relations to other people by default.
Social media provides the means to take control of your own brand and ensure people see you how you want them to see you.
So what are the essential social media tools that a 21st century executive and professional should have in his toolkit.
