Leadership Resolution: Make Social Media Work for You in 2022

Happy New Year! Welcome back to my newsletter, “Connected Leadership”, where I spotlight how executives from the C-suite to the Board are using social media to communicate and lead on their most important issues, highlight best-in-class examples, and provide practical advice along the way. While I wrote this article last year, the lessons still ring true today.

Many of us are probably hoping to minimize our time online; executives should head in the opposite direction.

Few New Years’ resolutions come as a surprise. Cultivating a meditation practice, exercising more, using our phones less—how many times have we heard some version of these? Yet my advice for 2022 may come as something of a surprise: Every CEO should resolve to establish an effective social media presence.

Our research finds that by a more than 5 to 1 ratio, employees prefer to work for a CEO who uses digital and social media. And, by a margin of 9 to 1, financial readers trust a Connected Leader more than a CEO who does not use social media as part of their work. This isn’t about leaders spending more time communicating—it’s about using that time to lead more effectively.

The most effective resolutions aren’t inspired by facts alone, otherwise our first reading of meditation’s benefits would see us become ardent practitioners. Instead, resolutions that succeed tend to have two ingredients: a spark and a system.

The spark ignites an awareness that the status quo isn’t acceptable: the heart attack that inspires a better diet and exercise, the explosive argument that leads to therapy. Last year certainly offered that jolt for the offline CEO. “The world has gone digital” more closely resembled an operational reality than a vague truism. Digital was how the most effective CEOs engaged their employees and spoke out against racial injustice. And amidst a global pandemic, leadership through a screen became the only option.

A spark awakens us to the need for change, but a system sustains it. “It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis,” James Clear writes in his bestselling Atomic Habits. “Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action.”

In my experience, successful Connected Leaders can invest as little as 15 minutes of their week to discuss their weekly social media strategy and 5 minutes per day to engage online.

For 5 minutes per day, leaders can:

1.????Review notifications to like or reply to comments and mentions, in accordance with their online engagement protocol.

2.????Scroll through their feeds to find opportunities to engage with influencers and peers.

3.????Share relevant, interesting news of the day.

4.????Look to trending topics for sources of content inspiration.

That’s a worthy resolution to aim for in 2022: 5 minutes a day. Small can sound underwhelming, but it accumulates. Over the course of a year, 5 minutes a day, 5 days a week, totals more than 21 hours.

For the executive totally in the dark about social platforms, step one might be asking your comms team to connect you with a peer who uses social media well, or to simply familiarize yourself with a channel. For the executive who’s online but rarely posts, maybe it’s committing to post once a month. For the leader already posting, it could be engaging with at least two comments on each post.

Clockwork discipline is crucial—consistent rather than piecemeal. Build these mini-sessions into your calendar. Have a comms team create a content calendar and help you keep to it, while working in the background to amplify your posts, analyze reach, and adjust the tactics accordingly.

The social media resolution, at its core, isn’t about being tech savvy; it’s about being a leader. Because surely any definition of corporate leadership entails regularly engaging with employees, connecting with customers, and delivering your message to policymakers and investors. Many of those stakeholders now spend roughly?two and a half hours a day on social media—what does it say about the CEO who is too busy, or too reticent, to meet them there for five minutes?

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