When it comes to crafting social media strategies, business social media pages are almost always the first port of call, but have you thought about the impact that can be generated from leveraging the personal profiles of the senior figures at your company or organisation?
At first glance, you might not think a personal social media profile can support wider business objectives, but the statistics suggest otherwise, particularly on LinkedIn. On the platform, engagements generated via a personal profile can often outstrip a business page, given the closer relationship and bond, you tend to have with your connections. That’s not to say a business presence is blunted; it just means that your strategy can be elevated to the next level by launching a two-pronged approach that puts senior figures front and centre.
Here are three ways how your C-Suite or executive level can use social media to their advantage.
- Long-form content goes a long way
We all know the trials and tribulations of character limits and trying to balance clarity with a call-to-action, but when it comes to an individual social media profile, you can be rewarded for going long with your content. On LinkedIn, the platform’s ‘Pulse’ feature enables users to share blog-length insight with their audiences. It is somewhat underused on the platform, but an effective long-form strategy on LinkedIn which can significantly aid your business objectives, be it traffic generation, product awareness or general visibility.
We work with a number of senior figures at our client’s businesses to draft and publish long-form articles on LinkedIn focussed on career and business insights, news commentary, industry analysis, product focuses and company milestones. Not only can they reap the engagement of their often huge audience pool, but such content can also be cross-promoted back across the business channels for added awareness. This worked particularly well for leading fine-wine investment firm, Cult Wines. We leveraged a range of senior figure profiles to create engaging insights that were subsequently used to reach potential new investor clients, as well as existing clients as a way of extending a personal service.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t know where to start with long-form content: we’re experts in drafting, publishing and optimisation articles on LinkedIn, all whilst monitoring the metrics that matter to prove impact and performance.
- Drive engagement via loyalty
Promoting C-Suite executives within a social media strategy isn’t just a box-ticking exercise to please the boss: the statistics suggest that real value can be extracted from a well-managed individual profiling strategy. Depending on who you ask, content from an individual can drive as much as 10x more engagements than content from a business page. Also, the longer your content, the more engagement it generates.
Some more statistics to persuade you that senior figure profiling is the way to go:
- 47% of thought leadership content on LinkedIn is found via a user’s feed or from a search on the platform. In other words, your content has a strong chance of being viewed by a high number of users outside your network.
- 81% of C-Suite users say they have greater trust in content that is shared from who they deem to be fellow thought-leaders.
The bottom line is the more personal an audience you have, the more likely they are to engage and share your content, which in turns means better visibility – all key ingredients that go towards generating thought leadership.
- Put some thought into leadership
It’s not just LinkedIn where senior figures can be leveraged: we’ve found great success with cross-channel strategies that make the most of Twitter and Instagram too. Whether it’s showing a side to your life that goes beyond a suit and tie, or partaking in conversation around a trending news topic or industry update, both channels represent a great way at increasing your visibility portraying yourself in different lights to different audiences. We have found great success within a similar social media strategy for a prominent philanthropist with interests across various sectors and topics.
There are of course many more benefits to utilising senior figures within a wider social media strategy, and if you would like any advice, or a more in-depth conversation on how we can help you achieve this, get in touch with us here today.
