I’m Too Busy to Play Around With Social Media!
I’ve heard leaders at all levels say that they are way too busy to get involved in social media. Even in the last several years I’ve talked with leaders that think it is a waste of time and does not support their mission and development.
Hopefully you are not this type of leader. Our entire planet is learning, thriving and now re-learning (resilience) virtually, and a great deal of this takes place over social media. Social media keeps us informed, but it also requires a serious amount of sorting, sifting and decision-based validation. This process is a big part of our lives and careers. Think about it this way. Each time we are given a project at work we must sort through ideas, problem sets and pathways, sift out the bad or less liked ideas, and decide about which ideas to choose that helps develop a successful project. Social media is not much different. In life you see everything imaginable over social media, and you constantly sift through information, posts, videos and photos and gravitate to your interests. Where dot the decision-based validation come in?
Let’s jump right in! So, you’re a leader, of people, groups, teams or organizations? Are you participating in social media? Wait! Are you directing communications for your mission over social media?
Let’s talk about this chaotic and extremely fast environment of “social media”. Why does it matter? If you participate in social media you probably are aware that it can be great or it can be very annoying. Here is the decision-based validation point. The bottom line for you, “the leader”, is that if you choose to ignore posting or ignore participation until its obviously overdue, someone else will beat you to the punch. When I say beating you to the punch I mean, literally knowing something before you, heading off an issue before you, getting your expertise on the radar of influencers before you and even seeing an employee problem or accolade before you. Whether you want to or not in today’s connected world you must make decisions about these activities happening under your nose on social media.
As of 2019 there were an estimated 2.7 billion social network users around the globe. Social Media is in every space of our lives, as consumers, citizens and students. In an organization your employees look up to you as their trusted source of information, inspiration and advice.
As leaders we all have our sources for inspiration and knowledge and in most cases, we continuously participate in three distinct roles, providing inspiration, information and advice even if we don’t know it or feel it. Contrast where we are today with a decade ago. Social media was just a baby then, and most thought it was a fad or another bad dot com failure. What didn’t happen then like it does today in most highly connected and virtually augmented businesses and organizations, is they not only use it but some even focus their entire business model through social media.
Where are the leaders? Are they really too busy? Or are they just not interested? Do some leaders even know what its all about? Forbes1 estimates that only 10 percent of fortune 500 CEOs are personally engaged in social media. At the 100,000-foot level that might seem a lot, but social media happens at the 10-foot level, tactically influencing and controlling our economy, elections, defense narratives and daily lives.
There is a great many aspects of social media one must remember to make it work to your benefit, hundreds of different techniques and approaches. If you remember one aspect about social media, remember this: as Forbes contributor Celine Schillinger, a leadership strategist says:
“In times of deep social and technological change, social media enables leaders to take advantage of the radical cognitive and relational transformations that are taking place everywhere. Social media creates within leaders and through them more capacity to metabolize the complexity of our modern world and turn it into a strategic advantage. “
In this post I’d like to share with you some insights I’ve learned about social media over the last 10 years as a leader of individuals, teams and groups. I want to cover a few areas that seem to always stick out when I am working on projects, employee development or just trying to get ahead of the information game on a particular subject.
Five years ago you would often get ahead of the information curve by at least a day or two, but in recent years if I don’t monitor and engage on social media daily (some days several times) I find that I have missed the boat. Information goes from hot to not and back to hot in minutes, not days.
Here is what I practice and tell others they should practice. Find a strategy in what you want to do, take a look at the bad and understand where it could take your brand and build lessons on how to counter it. Next find the good on social media that aligns with your brand and build strong connections and executable opportunities from it. In the end you must validate the need for your brand to operate and be successful on social media. We recommend our white paper for leaders to help you with a plan for the future.
Strategy
What would be your single purpose to use, participate in or place resources against social media?
Hour one, day one you must have a purpose behind a strategy. Without it, you will operate in the dark, within this fast moving, vicious world of social media. Sound daunting? You are not alone. It’s a wicked problem, and it’s up to our leaders to light the path and lead us into battle.
How do we start the trek down the hard and bumpy road? Even being a member of the in the Air Force you should consider employing a person or persons in a career field that you think can become your social media go-to. Don’t go millennial, don’t go x-gen, don’t go baby boomer, use them all!
Content strategists, chief marketing officers, brand managers and social media strategists are all part of social media in some way, and they all pull big dollars in salary these days. If you start strategizing now you can infuse some of the duties of these positions into your employee’s operations. Keeping in mind that organizations employ people (sometimes by the dozens) to monitor and report on social media activity as a full-time job. Only employing “part-time” social media monitors makes an organization vulnerable. Its an every second, by every minute job.
Often front-line supervisors can’t actually direct social media communications, but they can affect its focus or just listen to trends and activities. We’ll get to supervisors later in the discussion.
Currently the Air Force is running a few years behind following and implementing critical social media business trends. Its often a practice of senior leadership in the Air Force to watch industry fail at something first. Of course, spending billions on stealth technologies puts a damper on social media funding. However, social media is free except for the people and time to listen, create and manages content over social media. Keep in mind that social media guides out there are developed for the profit-base businesses. We must find a way to make the translation to non-profit perspectives. As hard as we try to hit the translation mark, we need your help.
We know that social media continues to be a very beneficial and low-cost organizational investment, with that in mind here are two important things social media does for a leader:
We will provide some basic information on the good and bad of social media as well as discuss validation. But first, tell us what your going in perspective is on social media is.
Take the Poll
The Good
Basically, social media a fruitful network you can use for several aspects of your role as a leader. Every discipline, job, function, business or organization change constantly. It changes at the speed of innovation and fast-paced connected conversation. With every change there is a learning curve. No worries we’ve put together a social media playbook that will give you some inspiration, direction, or validation.
As a leader you can uses social media to see what is trending in the world, region and even business you are in. If you are directing specific communications through social media for your organization you are ahead of the pack. Using appropriate hashtags can put a laser on your target.
Today’s leaders are social savvy, some more than others, and while some will never reveal where they gain knowledge or how they process it all, they learn, like everyone else they have a resource. Social media can be one of those on your list to develop your trusted knowledge base.
Stay with me unless you are already carrying the social media veteran card, then just see if anything else further validates your uses of social media.
Gathering themes and topics through social media that are relevant to your business or mission. and putting your own spin on it so that you are jumping into the conversation with your own expertise.
Using a targeted series of #hashtags is crucial to the listening aspect of social media. You can’t go wrong with using one each influencer hashtag, trend hashtag and an internal organization hashtag. This way you stay on trend, connect your influencers and show the world who is doing it.
The Bad
With the good there is worse. In Neil Patel’s3 article 50 ways social media can destroy a business he points out how elections are won with it and careers are destroyed by it. Its no longer a secret that employers can determine (subjectively of course) if they want to hire someone based on their social media exploits. It like professional athletes, and how they conduct themselves off the field or court can get them fined, suspended or even canned. A couple to point out:
Nothing dies on social media. Sometimes it the timing, and sometimes it’s a blatantly oblivious blunder conducted through not so carefully selected words for the world to review and comment on.
Sneak attacks. If you are not very heavily into social media you could become part of a sneak attack, that progressively gets worse as the hours tick by, and not only that you can’t do anything about it. Once its on, its on! You are unfortunately a passenger in a runaway bus on fire.
Political Maelstroms. Peeking in on political discussion is one thing but infusing your communications with political overtones can quickly backdraft a wall of flames back to you.
The Validation
As we promised to discuss…supervisors on social media have a big task ahead. Be forewarned, it’s a monumental task to keep up with social media to begin with, but actually assimilating the information is an entirely different level of social media monitoring and listening. Like anything we make a part of our business process, each supervisor and leader must weigh the benefits and the risks of participation. Most people between the ages of 18 and 65 participate in some form of social media.
How does one go about monitoring and listening?
Social media has several dozen channels, but the four we employ at Air University are where we feel most conversations take place.
Each social media platform is considered a “channel”. Here is a brief look at each channel and what they are good for.
Don’t be left in the dark in social media. Now more than ever, we as leaders must strive to make social media a part of our DNA. An effective social media monitoring and listening strategy involves responding to counter negativism and answer basic questions, without bashing people and being fair and factual about people’s ideas. Listening involves spending more time to holistically view the overall brand on social media and also look at industry trends to make more informed decisions for the organizations brand health and image. As sprout social’s digital strategist, Jenn Chen writes; “the most immediate benefit of social monitoring is that it makes your customers feel heard and supported.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic we were all forced into an environment that was uncomfortable, inconvenient, and unfortunate. Step up, be the boss, be the trusted source of inspiration and company validation. Here are some trends for 2021 that will help you succeed at that task.
Other excellent information on social media.
AU Social Media Community of Interest.
Sources