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Digital transformation is reinventing the enterprise across all industries, and true digital leaders are beginning to emerge. However, what’s still

Technology and social changes have spawned a new set of skills that distinguish relevant leaders from reluctant relics. Here are five cutting-edge skills that will give even the most experienced leaders a competitive advantage.

By: Lina Duque Social media has undeniably become a bona fide leadership tool. By expanding your toolkit to include social media, you are killing two birds with one stone: strengthening your reputation as a leader and enhancing your company’s brand. Women executives who are social media-savvy are perceived as more accessible, [...]

Only seven FTSE 100 CEOs currently use Twitter as a corporate marketing tool. I am grateful to the ever resourceful Matt Ballantine for this figure. It is a statistic that drives the social media fraternity to despair: 'why can't the remaining 93% see the benefits?'I would hazard a guess that the people running our leading corporations are pretty smart. Their collective refusal to embrace social media is a reflection of widely held beliefs that it doesn't represent a good use of their time and that the benefits from a communications perspective simply do not justify the risks.This deep-seated

Women in business have been hailed as better learners, listeners, and leaders across industries. However, as many recent studies indicate, women executives still have a long way to go to achieve parity in both the business world and the board room. Even the smartest women among us are often left waiting in the wings in a predominantly male-centric business culture.But social media is challenging the wisdom of quietly climbing the corporate ladder. Women leaders who successfully engage in social media can take giant leaps forward toward building a framework to showcase their leadership. By usi

Chief executives spread their wings as fledgling tweeter

When AirAsia flight QZ8501 disappeared on a trip from Surabaya to Singapore last month, the company’s chief executive, Tony Fernandes, took to Twitter to express his sorrow, post updates and rally his demoralised staff.

“I as your group CEO will be there through these hard times. We will go through this terrible ordeal together,” Mr Fernandes tweeted. “Keeping positive and staying strong. My heart bleeds for all the relatives of my crew and our passangers (sic). Nothing is more important to us.” Mr Fernandes’s tweets, complete with typos, came across as authentic and heartfelt, and won him praise in an otherwise bleak situation.

“It showed how powerful this medium can be when a CEO is dealing with a crisis,” says Leslie Gaines-Ross, chief reputation strategist at PR firm Weber Shandwick. “It is a way of having a deeper, closer relationship with employees and customers.”

Relatively few chief executives — especially at large companies — have joined Twitter. Only 14 per cent of the chief executives of the world’s largest listed companies are using the social media platform as a way to communicate.

Socialbro, a company that helps companies market themselves on Twitter, looked at the 224 companies listed on the FTSE 100, Nasdaq 100 and Dow Jones 30, and found that while more than 94 per cent had a corporate Twitter account, only 32 had chief executives who tweeted. Of these, only 20 were actively using the social media site.

“The low numbers really surprised me,” says Linda Bolg, head of marketing at Socialbro. “I would personally always advise being on Twitter as it can raise the company profile and give a CEO the opportunity to set the record straight if needed.”

Some business leaders may fear that Twitter turns out to be a passing fad or superseded by some other social media platform, although with 284m people now using it each month, such concerns are becoming harder to justify.

Ms Gaines-Ross says many chief executives are worried they will make a mistake, accidentally leak something about the company, or say something that provokes a backlash.

It is not an unreasonable fear. A number of people have lost their jobs because of ill-judged words on Twitter. Last November a Labour MP in the UK was sacked for a tweet that some thought sneered at working class people. Bluntly-worded tweets by leaders such as Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump regularly provoke angry outcry.

But the power of being able to communicate instantly with potentially thousands of people has persuaded some to overcome their concerns.

“If I am honest, I was terrified at first. I set up the account but I didn’t do anything with it at first. I just sat there,” says Jacqueline Gold, chief executive of Ann Summers, the lingerie chain, who is now known for her active presence. “Then I saw that, even though I wasn’t saying anything people were still starting to follow me, and I realised that they wanted to hear what I had to say.”

Indeed, the appetite for Twitter messages from leaders is immense. Warren Buffett has only ever sent five tweets on Twitter — the last of them nearly a year ago — but still has more than 936,000 followers.

Now Ms Gold uses Twitter not only to talk to customers about the business but runs a competition every Wednesday to highlight up-and-coming female entrepreneurs. “I am passionate about empowering women in the boardroom and Twitter allows me to mentor women, albeit with only 140 characters, that I would normally not have been able to reach,” she says.

A 2012 survey by Brandfog, a company that helps CEOs manage online reputations, found that people were much more likely to trust a brand if the CEO actively engaged on social media.

A Twitter presence can also be a useful recruitment tool, particularly when hiring younger members of staff.

“When young millennials are looking for jobs they will look at the company and the CEO on social media to see what they are like,” says Ms Gaines-Ross. Companies and executives with a social media presence will seem more forward thinking. Nafisa Nathani, a communications consultant and self-described “millennial”, puts it succinctly in an interview conducted over Twitter:

“No #millennial wants to work for a faceless corporation. CEOs are face to company. Social media helps to connect.”

Will Critchlow, chief executive of Distilled, an online marketing agency, actively uses Twitter. “I’ve made client relationships, hired people I got to know here, and more,” he says, adding that such connections can turn into sales.

The prospect of facing complaints directly from customers on Twitter may seem daunting. But they will be airing complaints on Twitter in any case and it is better to be there to hear and acknowledge them, says Ms Gold.

“If someone is really aggressive or a prolific complainer I would just ignore it, like you would a heavy breather phone call. But if it is a genuine complaint I will face it head on. It is really important to show customers that the CEO cares,” she says.

For a guide on CEO tweeting it is worth looking at the accounts of Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, and Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, two of the most popular CEOs on Twitter. Mr Musk has the most followers — more than 1.51m — but Mr Cook gets more engagement, with more followers retweeting or marking his messages as favourites.

“Tim Cook tends to share inspirational and behind the scenes content from Apple, while Elon Musk is slightly different — more hip, young and trendy, with a very human tone of voice,” says Ms Bolg.

Mr Musk’s recent tweet following a failed rocket flight displayed his wry style: “Next rocket landing on drone ship in 2 to 3 weeks w way more hydraulic fluid. At least it shd explode for a diff reason.”

Many tweeting CEOs sprinkle in liberal references to their favourite sports teams — Mr Cook tweets about the Auburn college football team that he passionately supports, Mr Fernandes’s feed is littered with pictures of Queens Park Rangers, the football club he owns, and Ms Gold publishes opinionated tweets about Celebrity Big Brother.

For those who are not ready to share this much, tweeting about company events and interesting articles is a safe place to start, says Ms Gaines-Ross. If executives are concerned about compliance issues she suggests getting a company lawyer to check over the tweets in the first few weeks “until you get the hang of it”.

Tweeting too much about your own company and products is a no-no.

“If you are only talking about your own products or retweeting PR headlines, your Twitter followers will tune out,” says Ms Bolg. It is also advisable, if possible, to write your own tweets.

“I think you can tell if tweets are ghostwritten,” says Ms Gold. “It has to be in your own voice or customers will disengage.”

It is not an issue that CEOs can ignore, says Ms Gaines-Ross. Gradually, she says, it is becoming a common practice. “It is from a low base, but it is not going away, it is growing,” she says. “By 2020 it is going to be ubiquitous.”

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4cdea000-a265-11e4-aba2-00144feab7de.html

This week marks a major milestone in Julia Hanigsberg's career as she steps down as Vice President of Administration and Finance of Toronto's Ryerson University to take on the top job at the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital....

The True Influence of CEOs on Social Media: Relevance Trumps Followers

What’s better than boasting a million followers on Twitter? For C-Suite executives, it’s achieving a high degree of relevance and influence within an industry. Having a handful of industry luminaries believe that their point of view and content are relevant and share-worthy on social media is better than a massive group of not-so-engaged and not very influential followers.

Put simply, executives on social media will be judged by the company they keep. Why? Because it’s more important to have the right people around you that add value to your business, rather than legions of non-essential followers. On social networks, C-Suite executives that are positioned as ‘central’ to the most prominent players in the industry have increased authority, and benefit from the flow of interesting ideas, achieving insight into trends happening inside their community.

In mathematical terms, this is called network centrality. Within the world of social media, centrality closely matches what we think of as influence or prominence in a given community. With the rapid evolution of online business networks and the flood of meta-data available from Twitter, network centrality has become an essential tool for understanding online relationships and activity.Most importantly, it allows us to move past the outdated correlation of influence to follower numbers, as we can now analyze an individual’s true influence based on engagement with a select few. This is a more accurate measure of executive standing.

This quality vs. quantity distinction is becoming increasingly important as senior executives across a wide swath of industries begin to adapt to a social world. When CEOs wade into the waters of social media for the first time, they quickly discover that there are myriad strong and disparate voices that influence the industry. These power players ignite and guide discussions on trends, and they enjoy a sizable share of voice on specific topics. “Communities of interest” for business leaders can be examined and cataloged to determine the level of importance they have for the individual executive. The relationships within the communities can be mapped and visualized to better understand an executive’s most relevant network – the people creating and sharing content that will truly add value to a business leader’s busy day.

As C-Suite leaders are still discovering, social media has emerged as a full-fledged leadership tool. Successful engagement comes from listening to, and adding your voice to conversations within influential communities. That means creating and sharing smart, relevant content consistently, commenting on emerging trends and directing others to insights from respected sources. This grows and strengthens thought leadership and reputation. Success hinges upon how well executives can tap into the existing networks of the powerful few – high-profile analysts, market researchers, scientists, technology leaders, journalists, and big thinkers. These are the individuals who exert the most gravitational pull within the community. Having other thought leaders amplify a message because they found it useful ─ this is the holy grail of social media for the C-Suite.

At BRANDfog, we work with CEOs to build leadership profiles and establish enough of a rapport and mutual respect with key members in the community that he or she can reach out to arrange a meeting in the real world. This occurs more frequently than people think, and includes meetings with industry press, analysts and other prominent business leaders that would not have happened otherwise. Therefore the relevant social ROI metric becomes one's position relative to those who make up the innermost circles of influence within the community — and the extent to which he or she is able to pick and choose influencers to connect with in the real world.

The concept of network centrality lends itself nicely to an analytical approach to measuring true influence in social media. In an upcoming post, I will share more details about how C-suite executives can define their most relevant community, interpret their place within the social networks centered on that community and its most influential members, and then execute a strategy to improve their standing.

Social media is much more than a networking tool and a numbers game for CEOs. It’s the key to establishing leadership prominence, building relationship capital and transforming influence into loyalty within communities that matter.

Leadership In The Social Age

Leadership in the Social Age: Why the C-Suite is Behind the Curve

BRANDfog Examines the Benefits of Executive Social Media Engagement

Social media has become a primary means of business communication worldwide. As of September 2014, Twitter logged 271 million monthly active users[i]. From a business standpoint, people use social networks as a crucial tool for spotting trends, engaging with brands, and expanding professional networks.

Consumers increasingly prefer to access customer support on social media than by phone – and the demand to ‘speak to a manager’ has transformed to a tweet to company executives. Smart industry leaders have taken advantage of this trend and staked positions as thought leaders across every business sector – technology, travel, entertainment, health care, big data, finance– you name it.

Using social media to establish a leadership post within a specific industry is a strategy that enhances credibility, and provides a response mechanism for reputation and crisis management. Social media has also brought about another leadership trend, an increase in CEO accountability to customers and the communities they serve. Customer expectations now include corporate transparency about everything from product origin, clean supply chains, employee rights, fairness and diversity, and corporate responsibility.

Social media has increased the demand for leaders to be accessible, so that customers and stakeholders can engage directly. In a hyper-responsive social environment, stake-holders demand relevant, timely and personal replies to their messages. This expectation exists whether or not executives are engaging on social media.

WHAT IS HOLDING THE C-SUITE BACK?

The paradigm shifts of modern communications present both challenges and opportunities for business leaders. Engaging in real time across many new channels demands flexibility and a high level strategy that’s worlds away from the old, trickle-down communications model. Curiously, executives continue to lag behind even as they affirm the growing importance of social media. They advocate for change to address the digital transformation taking place inside their organizations, while ignoring the social imperative of being present and accounted for. A fear of risk and a scarcity of time are the two most widely stated reasons for C-Suite inaction on social media. Yet a reluctance to engage can cost companies the brand trust that they most covet. A recent BRANDfog survey showed that executives who engage in social media significantly increase brand trust. What’s more, 75% of stakeholders[ii]state that CEO engagement on social media leads to better leadership, yet an alarming 68% of Fortune 500 CEOs have no presence on any social media platform whatsoever.[iii]

In this report, we've curated a rich array of data points from recent research to demonstrate how social media engagement has become critical for C-Suite success. We’ve examined the top reasons behind the CEO hesitancy to embrace social, as well as what’s preventing the widespread adoption of social media as a business and leadership tool. Our report also addresses the perception of C-Suite social media engagement to those outside the company, to determine how stakeholders, employees, customers and investors view C-Suite executives that are not social-media savvy. We took a look at the positive benefits for CEOs on social, and examined the role of social media for reputation and crisis management.

The results are clear. Executive use of social media creates more forward-looking, effective leaders, dramatically transforming today’s communications landscape. As a result, modern C-Suite executives have to learn to master a variety of new digital skills to stay relevant in today’s global business world.

THE FINDINGS: INSIDE THE C-SUITE

CEOs believe that social media is transforming their enterprise and their markets, but are still not engaging on social media in significant numbers

CEOs are not active on social channels:

Fortune 500: 8.4% are on Twitter, but only 2.8% of Fortune 500 CEOs are actively engaging (posting once a month or more).[iv]9% of Fortune 500 CEOs are on LinkedIn[v].

Fortune 100: 8.1% on Twitter, 21.2% on LinkedIn[vi]

Fortune 50: 2% on Twitter, 6% on LinkedIn[vii]

Fortune 50: 18% on any social network at all, up only 2% from 2010[viii]

Note: 40% of Fortune 50 CEOs engage via video, either on their company’s website or through a company YouTube channel. While the use of video doesn't constitute social media engagement, it provides a reserve of original content that can be shared through social media channels.

Over 50% of CEOs believe that social channels will be a primary way of engaging customers within five years.[ix] CEOs know that their customers are on social, but are shying away from meeting them there personally, even as they push for increased brand presence and responsiveness.

Social media is a tool for creating openness and transparency, which organizations need to stay competitive and to build trust

48% of top-performing CEOs believe that their organizations are facing a competitive need to be open and transparent, as opposed to 37% of underperformers.[x]

71% of survey respondents agree that a company whose C-Suite executives and leadership team use social media as a public relations channel to openly communicate about core mission, values and purpose is more trustworthy.[xi]

77% of BRANDfog’s Global Social CEO Survey respondents agree that executive use of social media fosters brand transparency, up from 64% in 2012.[xii]

CEO’s top leadership priorities can all be supported by the effective use of social media for business

If social media is so crucial, why aren't more CEOs engaging? Some reasons include inability to measure ROI, lack of time, and lack of knowledge:[xiii]

Employees, customers and community stakeholders increasingly regard CEO social media engagement as a key leadership skill, and are willing to reward those CEOs who step up to the plate

Non-CEO executives value CEO social media engagement

Executives attribute 49% of a company’s reputation to the CEO’s reputation.[xiv]

Overall ranking of benefits of social media use:

Executives rank social CEOs more highly on leadership metrics.[xv]

Executives rank social CEOs more highly on communication skills.[xvi] Social CEOs are ranked higher on almost all the positive descriptors of communications styles (open & honest, respectful, friendly, personal), and lower on almost all the negative descriptors (impersonal, scripted, distant, condescending, closed & misleading).

Employees and customers value CEO engagement on social media, which can lead to strengthening brand relationships, and even increasing purchase intent

It matters for brand reputation and purchase intent:

61% of US respondents are more likely to purchase from a company whose values and leadership are clearly communicated through executive leadership participation on social media.[xvii]

It matters for building relationships:

83% of US respondents believe that CEO participation in social media can build better connections with customers, employees, and investors.[xviii]

It matters for crisis management:

87% of US respondents agree that having a social media policy in place allows a company’s leadership team to be proactive rather than reactive in response to company challenges.[xix]

It matters for leadership:

75% of employees & customers think executive participation on social media makes better leaders.[xx]

Social Media is a Powerful Tool for Women Leaders to Strengthen & Enhance Brand Reputation

92% of US respondents to BRANDfog’s Women, Social Media, and the C-Suite Survey believe that social-media-savvy women executives can improve a company’s brand image.[xxi]

Nearly three-quarters (74%) of respondents agree that women executives who are social-media-savvy are more accessible, transparent and trustworthy business leaders.[xxii]

Nearly nine out of ten (89%) of US respondents say that social-media-savvy women executives can strengthen a brand’s leadership team.[xxiii]

CONCLUSION:

Social media isn't just for brands anymore. Social media is a key tool for business leadership in this hyper-connected era. The changing communications landscape will require CEOs to engage in social media or risk losing market share to competitors willing to learn new skills and embrace new tactics. The next generation of employees and customers expect CEOs to be accessible on social media.

Modern CEOs must make strategic use of social channels to engage with constituents, and to embrace open and transparent leadership. Forward-thinking CEOs use social media to humanize their brand, and to engage with a variety of stakeholders including employees, customers, press, analysts and investors. They integrate social into their corporate communications strategy, using it to listen and engage with their communities. Social media is changing the culture of leadership. Today’s leaders must embrace the best tools available to remain competitive in a digital and social age.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL WHITEPAPER

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leadership-social-age-ann-m-charles

Delivering people to your business through content

Women, Social Media & the C-Suite

While many movements are underway to promote women into positions of power and influence, active social media engagement is a simple, often overlooked step women leaders can take to advance their careers and solidify their professional reputations in 2015 and beyond.

In our latest 2014 BRANDfog Social Media Leadership survey, we examined social media as a vital communications and professional reputation channel for women in leadership roles. Our survey results demonstrate that socially-savvy women executives stand out, making them more visible as industry experts and more attractive candidates for the C-Suite. Respondents in the US and UK agree that active social Women in business have been hailed as better learners, listeners, and leaders across industries. However, as many recent studies indicate, women executives still have a long way to go to achieve parity in representation in the business world and in the board room. An overwhelming majority – 92% - of US respondents believe that social-media-savvy women executives can improve a company’s brand image. 83% of UK respondents agree.

In the US, 85% of survey respondents believe that women executives can use social media to build credibility and establish thought leadership. 77% of UK respondents agree.

82% of survey respondents in the US say that women executives can use social media to build reputations to make them attractive candidates for the C-Suite. Nearly three-quarters (74%) of survey respondents in the UK agree.

In the US, nearly three-quarters (74%) of respondents agree that women executives who are social-media-savvy are more accessible, transparent and trustworthy business leaders. In the UK, nearly two-thirds (64%) do.

Nearly nine in ten (89%) respondents in the US say that social-media-savvy women executives can strengthen a brand’s leadership team. In the UK, more than three in four (78%) agree.

Download a copy of the 2014 BRANDfog Social Media Leadership survey

METHODOLOGY BRANDfog’s 2014 Social Media Leadership Survey surveyed 1000 US and UK employees in diverse companies. The companies surveyed ranged in size from startups to Fortune 1000 companies, and spanned various industries.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141201202840-22652526-women-social-media-the-c-suite

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The Social CEO [INFOGRAPHIC]

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