One of the most underutilized digital marketing strategies is executive social media. Marketers who are able to successfully position their company’s executives as thought leaders reap the benefits, such as increased brand awareness, lead generation opportunities, credibility building, and more.
For digital marketers managing their company’s social media properties, here are some ways you can support your executive’s social media presence!
Why Promote Your Executive On Your Company’s Social Media Page?
Before we get into three ways to promote your executive, marketers might be wondering why they should feature their executive on their company’s feed in the first place.
Your company’s executive plays a large role in your thought leadership strategy — both from an individual and a company level. Their online presence can contribute to a number of different company objectives, whether it’s to build credibility and trust, share different messages that the company’s social media page isn’t focused on, or support hiring initiatives given that more job seekers are using social media to research companies.
For digital marketers, sharing content from their executive’s social media page or creating content that features them can result in a social media feed with more diverse content types and objectives. A company’s social media page shouldn’t focus solely on “salesy” messaging and product shots. That’s where thought leadership content comes in and where executives can play a large role in helping marketers achieve business goals.
It Starts With Social Media Best Practices!
Employing social media best practices can help your content get more views, likes, and engagement.
Across social media platforms, tagging is one example of a feature that marketers should leverage often. If you’re sharing content on your company’s social media feed and you’re mentioning your executive, make sure to properly tag them with the “@” symbol. You’ll know it’s properly tagged if their name becomes clickable, linking to their profile.
Tagging lets other social media users know that your company’s executive is on social media, which can help boost follower growth on their page.
Make Use of Social Media Sharing Features
Most social media sites make it easy for users to reshare or repost content from another page directly on their own page.
On LinkedIn, marketers have the option to reshare or repost an executive’s post. While they sound similar, there’s a major difference in terms of how engagement is calculated.
Resharing is more common, and it’s when you share the post but also write an original comment that sits just above the shared post. Any reactions (“likes”) or comments count towards your reshare (in other words, the engagements are for your company’s page).
Reposting is essentially sharing the executive’s post directly on your company’s page without any new additions. If a user “likes” the reposted content, it counts towards the executive’s engagement results on their post.
Run Thought Leader Ads on LinkedIn
One of LinkedIn’s newer ad products, Thought Leader Ads finally allows companies to sponsor posts shared by employees (previously, digital marketers could only sponsor posts made on their company page).
Sponsoring an executive’s post increases its reach, delivering it to a larger audience that may not be following your executive or your company page. As its name implies, these ads help position your executive (and, by extension, your company) as thought leaders or experts within a particular industry.
Since these ads are relatively new, they don’t have all the bells and whistles compared to more established ad products on LinkedIn. However, digital marketers hoping to promote their executive’s online presence should definitely check it out nonetheless. Read more about Thought Leader Ads here!
Level Up Your Digital Marketing!
Executive social media is an effective way to build out your existing digital marketing program, but for marketers who still need help with developing their company’s social media strategy, we can help!
We’ve worked with both B2B and B2C brands, including companies in highly regulated industries, such as healthcare and pharmaceutical. Click the button below to read some of our case studies!
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