Bosses need to lead on social media
Business bosses need to use social media to lead from the front, according to a marketing expert and author visiting New Zealand.
Cheryl Burgess is a keynote speaker at Spark Digital’s FWD Live conference, in Auckland on Wednesday.
The co-author of The Social Employee said brands that patted themselves on the back after jumping on Twitter or LinkedIn were not truly social businesses.
Those leading the way considered people, processes and technology, which resulted in ‘‘branding from the insideout’’.
While most people no longer trusted advertising, they did trust peer recommendations, Burgess said.
But it was not enough to simply order employees to get on social media and leave them to it.
‘‘You’ve got to align them with the vision and the values of your company,’’ she said. ‘‘If they buy into that, they’re going to be passionate and happy.’’
Employee attitudes would range from very enthusiastic to those who were deadset against it, she said.
‘‘The question here is, should they even be working for your company?’’ she said of the latter group.
Managers needed to practice what they preached, Burgess said.
‘‘Five years ago or 10 years ago, it was OK to be a leader without being social. [Now] they don’t need to be the best, but they need to understand.’’
Many businesses used a reverse mentoring system, whereby younger employees who tended to be ‘‘digital natives’’ helped their bosses get to grips with Facebook or Twitter, she said.
Burgess said every company should have a social media policy, but it had to be simple and easy to use.
‘‘Trust your employees. If you can’t trust your employees, who can you trust?’’
With the potential for embarrassing gaffes, the social media policy needed to be accompanied by a skillset assessment and ongoing training in etiquette, Burgess said. ‘‘You’re at fault if you don’t train your employees.’’
Burgess said New Zealand was generally sophisticated when it came to digital innovation.
New Zealand-based creative consultant Russell Douglas is speaking at the conference on emerging digital trends and how to get closer to customers.
He said being a ‘‘little country on the edge of the world’’ created both obstacles and opportunities.
Douglas recently worked on Air New Zealand’s latest in-flight entertainment service, which allows frequent fliers to receive more tailored content based on their viewing history.
Not many companies were fully taking advantage of digital trends and applying them to the needs of their customers, he said.
Businesses needed to look at how they could connect with other services, for example through the internet of things, he said. ‘‘We should be more playful, we should be more experimental and we should be exploring outside of our core products and services and thinking about a more holistic view.’’