Your business’s social media marketing should start with your business brand, but not end with it. The personal Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram accounts of your company’s leaders should augment your business’s social media presence. By having those in your c-suite using their social media accounts to help market your business, you help put a face to your business that boosts engagement, visibility, highlights company culture, and promotes employees – both in retention and recruitment. However, before you start you need to find the right leadership on social media and help set boundaries to avoid blunders.

How Social Media Leadership Translates to Marketing

For an example in action, let’s turn to Julia Becker Collins, our Chief Operating Officer. Being the day-to-day operator of the company, she’s often the first person to meet a prospective client. She’s built many connections through her background in networks (co-founding the MetroWest Women’s Network), her activity on social media, and her involvement in volunteering and Spartan/Ultramarathon races. By promoting her own posts and Vision Advertising initiatives, she can extend the reach of our marketing as well as open public relations opportunities such as speaking engagements and marketing workshops.

Picking Your C-Suite Social Media Stars

Looking at the above example, what makes a good social media star among your executives? While candidates don’t need all these features, they need some and a willingness to learn the rest:

• A willingness to make parts of their life public
• Proficiency and activity on social media
• Active community involvement, including volunteering
• Social media friendly activities, including public events
• The ability to relate to your ideal client demographics
• Camera and writing proficiency

Combining Business Branding with Personal Social Media

It’s important to understand that by becoming a social media ambassador for your business, you need to reflect both your company’s identity and follow the key parts of good social media branding. Going forward (and perhaps even going back), you need to make sure your personal branding isn’t going against the grain of your business’s.

Consistency, Voice, and Linking on Social Media

Key among these is consistency, but also making sure your own voice and tone compliments your business is crucial. Good link etiquette is important as well, making sure to provide backlinks to your business’s website and events to increase traffic.

What Should Leadership Post About?

Once your leadership has decided to use their personal social media to help with your business’s marketing, it’s important for them to understand what kind of posts help drive engagement and traffic. A few ideas:

• Start (or continue) to post about your activities and community involvement. Think of this as building your personal brand and how it reflects on your business.
• Talk about upcoming events involving you and your company. Speaking at an event for your business? Someone else’s? Being presented with an award? Make sure to post it.
• Highlight content from your business you’re excited about. From blogs to open positions, talk about things going on in your business that excites or personally affects you. This also goes for any content (guest blogs, press releases, etc.) posted by third parties.
• Promoting other employees. Think about highlighting the endeavors of other employees at the business, including social sharing for increased visibility, engagement, and credibility.
• Keep being your awesome self. You were picked because you’re a prime social media star, so keep being you. Bring your own humor and quirkiness to the table.
• Is there anything you need to tone down? Keeping the above in mind, it’s important to have a discussion with your peers and marketing team about anything to avoid, from politics and religion to thing to not promote.

Making sure your leadership isn’t only a great fit but also properly coached for social media marketing can seem daunting, but you don’t have to go it alone. Vision Advertising specializes in consultation and coaching on marketing strategies and social media. From setting out marketing plans to augmenting your social media with crafted posts, we can help. Contact us today.