Take a minute to think about executives that blog. The first names that come to mind are probably Fake Steve Jobs, Fake Bill Gates, Fake Larry Ellison or Fake Richard Branson. Isn’t it strange that the most prominent social C-levellers are fraudulent?
Not really. There simply aren’t that many in senior management who are willing to devote their time to social networking, so the fakes get a much bigger share of the limelight, the headlines and the hits.
There are a few notable, big-name companies that have convinced their employees to social network. Google, IBM, Cisco and Microsoft all have public blogs that readers can browse and comment on. But these companies are the exception to the norm.
The Australian scene is particularly lacking. Most of the interesting and influential C-level social networking goes on in the US and, by and large, Australian execs seem content to leave it that way.
This is a problem, says Gartner, because employees look to their masters when it comes to corporate conduct. If the higher-ups aren’t blogging, the staff won’t, either.
As such, the analysts recently called on CIOs to start using social networking both publicly and within their own companies, providing an example for the rest of their organisations to follow.
The forerunners
But while the overall picture looks grim, there is a growing contingent of C-level social networkers in Australia. Interestingly, most of these social forerunners work in start-ups that produce Web 2.0 applications.
According to Peter J Cooper, the Web 2.0 guys are so heavily invested in social networking because “that's where they're making a living, and that's the best way of making contact with their customers”.
Cooper knows a little something about C-level social networkers: he is one. He’s been a CIO, a CEO and a COO, and has overseen several tech start-ups in Australia as an angel investor.
He runs several public blogs, is an active Twitterer and is also a member of several closed communities. These communities include Salesforce.com and Saasu.com, an online accounting start-up he oversees.
Cooper has experienced the business benefits of social networking first hand. He says that posts on his blogs have actually landed him sales leads from some unexpected sources, even though that was never the point of the blog.
“We weren't pitching to that industry, and we weren't pitching that product to that individual,” he says of the eventuating deals. The companies just stumbled across the blog and, based on Cooper’s reputation and the quality of the blog, decided to spend some money.
For those looking to get involved with social media, Cooper recommends LinkedIn as a starting point. However, he warns against investing in too many networks, as there’s just too many to try.
“I would not go around trying them all because it's just a waste of time,” he says. “You could lose days on FaceBook. Don't do anything unless it makes sense.”
Stan Relihan, CEO of recruiting firm Expert Executive Search, is another fan of LinkedIn. He has a whopping 22,000+ connections on the website, which has become an integral tool in his recruiting arsenal.
“Previously, I've had to rely on my personal network and extensive research to find suitable candidates,” Relihan says.
“But now that LinkedIn has become much more of a mainstream tool, with most of the people I'd want to find already on there, it's become the first port of call when commencing a new search assignment.”
Like Cooper, Relihan recommends LinkedIn as a social networking starting point. But it will take some effort to turn it into a useful tool.
“It's vital to build a 'critical mass' of connections (at least 500) in order to enable the 'butterfly effect' of unexpected beneficial outcomes to start working for you — very often as a result of second or third level connections,” he says.
Missed opportunities and the future
Laurel Papworth, a social networking strategist, believes that organisations that skip social networking are missing out. This is thanks to a misunderstanding of what it’s all about.
“Social networking is the ability not just to connect with friends, family and colleagues, but also potential employers, potential vendors, potential clients or actual clients,” she says.
Social media can therefore act as a marketing channel or, when combined with advertising, act as a potential revenue stream. It can also help with tech support: by replacing traditional support with a community in which users can help one another, you can cut costs down to a fifth of what they were.
And although social networking is not yet a priority for business, it soon will be. Papworth warns of community-driven anti-branding activities that can threaten a company’s reputation. Home users now have the tools and the know-how to present potentially damaging content — such as claims about Nike sweat shops — and, through social media, attract other users to their cause.
And in the future, Papworth says, quelling such discontent won’t be the domain of PR or marketing. Instead, companies will appoint C-level social media officers to deal with potentially damaging anti-branding communities when they appear.
Just try googling your own company’s name, and see what turns up.
*Andrew Collins is a freelance journalist and the former assistant editor of Voice&Data.