CHS' Zach Hughes gives us a great example of how leaders can use LinkedIn to build reputation, thought leadership
Last week, on Halloween, it was not surprising to see your social feeds full of humans big and small dressed up as all sorts of things—lots of Beetlejuice and Inside Out characters in my feeds! Certainly, we saw this on Facebook and Instagram with our kids. But, we also saw it on LinkedIn with our teams as many dressed up at work.
Then I saw this post.
It’s a video from CHS vice president, Zach Hughes mimicking Napolean Dynamite’s famous dance in the cult classic. Yep, that’s him in the wig. And yep, that’s him doing the entire dance. On LinkedIn. Again, this guy is a CIO at a large company in the Twin Cities. Not exactly something we see everyday.
The bigger story is Zach Hughes is no ordinary executive. In fact, I could make a pretty strong case that he is one of the best examples of what I think an executive presence should look like on LinkedIn in 2024.
Allow me to outline my argument:
He’s posting consistently
One of the biggest refrains I still hear from execs who want to be more active on LinkedIn is “I don’t have time to be posting and commenting.” Zach appears to have made a habit of LinkedIn. He’s consistently (and that’s the key word here) posting 1-2 times per week, every week. I usually argue once a week is more than enough for execs, but it’s the consistency that matters.
He’s using all the formats
Most execs I see on LinkedIn stick pretty closely to two formats: Photo posts and carousel posts. And largely, that’s perfectly fine. However, here Zach is using another tip I usually provide in my LinkedIn trainings—use ALL the formats! Clearly, he’s using video (see the full Napolean dance vid here ). He’s using photo posts once in a while (he’s not heavy on these). He’s using carousel posts infrequently. And he’s also using LinkedIn newsletters (more on that in a minute). The only format I don’t really see him using is polls (very underrated and underused by execs). Overall though, Zach is mixing it up very well.
领英推荐
He’s talking about much more than just his day job
One of the biggest challenges for execs on LinkedIn is the fact that they focus almost entirely on the day job with their content. This is not surprising given this is what people at this level have been trained to do—talk about earnings, talk about growth, talk about company culture, talk about awards and events. All good stuff. But it’s missing one critical component to success on LinkedIn—talking about who you are away from work. Now, Zach doesn’t post that much content that fits in the “away from work” bucket, but this post above is a good example. Note the level of engagement—545 engagements. His last 10 posts averaged 80 engagements per post. People want to get a glimpse into exec’s personalities and what they do outside of work. Zach is doing this in small doses—I would argue he should be doing it a little more.
He’s using LinkedIn newsletters to build authority
This is where Zach shines. I haven’t really seen all that many execs who have built their own, consistent, week-to-week newsletter on Linkedin. But for Zach, it’s working wonderfully. So far, he has 85 editions of the newsletter named “Zach on Leadership” and covers topics from titles at work to innovation to vacations. The beautiful part is the newsletter is just repurposed from his blog by the same title. Oh, also, Zach has a podcast, too. So I guess the next time an exec tells me “I have no time” I’m just going to point them to Zach and his prolific content creating capabilities!
He’s active in the comments
Maybe the thing I’m most impressed about by Zach and his presence on LinkedIn is how he shows up in the comments—which is A LOT! Again, most execs claim they don’t have the time or energy to reply to all the comments they get on their posts. But here’s Zach replying to ALMOST EVERY comment on his posts. That’s absolutely insane, but again, he is proving it is possible to be an executive and spend time responding to people on LinkedIn.
Kudos, Zach. You’ve given us all some powerful leverage with our leaders on LinkedIn.
Purpose-Driven Growth Coach | Author, Grow North Thursday | Marketing Advisor | 3x Entrepreneur | Airplane & Sauna Builder
1 周Ok Arik Hanson, so much I love here! Lifting up others, sharing education and best practices, and highlighting the human side of executive presence. So much we can learn from Zach Hughes. Well done you two!
Vice President, IT at CHS | Leadership Lessons | Tech Futurist | Speaker | Writer | Podcaster
2 周Thank you, Arik, for the generous article. I started getting intentional about my LinkedIn activity about 8 years ago. It continues to be an experiment. Your opening observation is probably the most powerful. My consistency is the key. It's never about trying to make that one viral post. It's about building a brand and building a community, slowly and consistently over time.
Chief Marketing Officer @ AB CarVal | Global Marketing, Corporate Communications
2 周This is fantastic!
Vice President Human Resources | Strategic HR Leadership | Talent Acquisition | HR Operations | HR Technology | Authentic Leader
2 周Yeah Zach Hughes! And I can tell you it has an impact on the talent he attracts to his team. There’s a business case for building and leveraging your network and he’s a great example.