Social media is (slowly) making it’s way into the boardroom

As social media use becomes more prolific amongst individuals and brands, there is an increasing need for social media to make its way into the boardroom. That’s to say, CEOs, CTOs, directors, upper management all need to have an awareness not only of how social media and technologies can work for them from a marketing point of view, but how it should be adopted throughout the entire business. This is starting to happen, albeit slowly and it marks an interesting new phase in the evolution of social media, as it moves away from being just a medium for disseminating messages and becomes a whole level on its own in the company infrastructure. Some companies are already doing this, while some have a long way to go.

Social media in the c-suite

An interesting study was released by Useful Social Media recently, that examined who the most senior person directly responsible for social media is within an organisation. The results are interesting, and show that social media is starting to spread outside of the marketing department alone. Encouragingly 12% of the companies surveyed claimed that social media was under the direct control of the CEO

While the chart doesn’t explain indepth what is classified as ‘working directly with social media’, the findings are still encouraging and show that social media is now under the radar of the right people in the organisation : the real decision makers. This is good news for brands and social media practitioners, as the higher up the chain social media gets, the more budgets will inevitably follow.

Why the CEO needs to be involved

When an organisation opens up through social media, they are opening up their entire brand, messaging and products for interpretation by the user. Unless your CEO is directly aware of your activity and also the ways in which it can be used, then you risk making some very big mistakes very publicly. You can bet when something goes wrong, the CEO (or similar) will sit up and take notice. Getting them active on social media themselves means they’re going to develop an innate understanding of how social media functions and could possibly prevent something going wrong. It all comes back to the idea of social media not acting within a silo. Opening up your brand to a public forum should not be underestimated and it’s imperative that social media is embraced openly at all levels of an organisation, if it’s to be implemented at all.

Social media also needs to make its way into the boardroom, as this is where the greatest potential lies for social technologies to change the entire business overall. Company structures in savvy organisations are becoming more flexible and permeable, as social can affect everything from marketing to product development, customer service and more. Upper management have the organisational knowledge and decision-making power needed to develop a whole new way of doing business, that fits with the way that people are communicating and connecting with each other every day. Business principles will of course always be the same, but will adapt as new processes & systems emerge. Right now the area of change is within social media.

Not quite there yet

The potential for social media adoption among the c-suite depends largely on the motivations for this. A survey in Australia among CEOs found that an overwhelming 49% were concerned about the use of social media for their organisation due to how it could negatively impact their reputation. This concern is understandable, but it shows that the use of social media in a company still has a way to go and that the fear that marketing departments are used to is also finding its way into the boardroom. This presents perhaps the biggest stumbling block for social media in the upper levels of an organisation. Without understanding how this can actually be turned into a positive opportunity, the temptation will remain to block social media altogether. Until of course, it’s too late and you find yourself having to bring out the CEO to appear in an apology video.

If social media is to make its way into the boardroom successfully, it needs to be adopted at every level of the business. That means the CEO needs to tweet (take a leaf out of Richard Branson’s book), employees need to be connected by internal social technologies and most importantly, social media needs to be used to open up communication at both the highest and lowest levels. When every employee in an organisation is an effective spokesperson through their own social media channels, it’s important that knowledge is spread as much as possible to ensure that people are sending out the right message, where they’re entering into conversations about the company they work for and often innocently offering customer service off their own back.  When finding out that an employee blogs or tweets, far too often the upper management comes down heavy handed and strongly polices this or forces them to shut down their blog. I’ve heard far too many examples of this still happening and it seems to be a symptom of misunderstanding social media by the people that should understand it most : those that are responsible for how the organisation develops, remains relevant and puts themselves where their consumers are.