Social media help bosses tell their story

Most bosses are over the age of 40 and don’t use social media much. Are they missing out? Should the chief executive be on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+? More than three-quarters of the leaders of the 100 biggest US corporations do not have a Facebook page and only two CEOs use Twitter. But among twenty-something entrepreneurs running online companies, 100 per cent are fully involved in the scene. Who has got it right?

Unquestionably, marketing attention is switching remorselessly towards the digital universe. Of course, there is vast hype surrounding the genre, but the growing impact among consumers is undeniable. Surveys suggest many consumers now spend more time online than watching broadcast television.

In particular, the intimate nature of social media is a huge tool for entrepreneurs who want to give their brand personality. If they are more of a story than the product, it should be an easy win.

This is much harder to pull off for corporate bloggers. Either they come across as tame and fake – or they risk making gaffes that can spiral out of control. Perhaps the most pressing reason to use social media is that Google now takes into account such activity in its search rankings.

I do a prehistoric form of blogging every week with this Financial Times column. I prefer this old-fashioned medium – an edited essay in a serious forum, rather than a spur-of-the moment outburst somewhere on the web. Apparently, only 3 per cent of CEOs have such a website. I can understand why: they are busy, they are advised against it by their PR agents, and quite possibly they do not enjoy expressing themselves in the written form on a regular basis.

This is a shame. More practitioners in business should be out there describing their experiences and giving their opinions. It might help correct some of the misinformation promulgated by anticapitalists, and the general scepticism about wealth creators expressed by much of the media.

While a Facebook profile with embarrassing details of your private life can be deadly for your career prospects, multinationals are exploiting the sheer power of the network’s traffic. Coca-Cola has 36m fans on Facebook – and this number is growing by 30,000 every day. It is in the top 20 Facebook fan pages. This is a low-cost way of reinforcing a brand’s presence in the mind of the public.

Board-level business has a problem with the impromptu nature of social media. Many discussions must remain confidential, but bloggers and tweeters are by instinct indiscreet. For Willy Walsh of British Airways, it became obvious his union opponent Derek Simpson might not be sincere about negotiations over strikes when it emerged that Mr Simpson was tweeting his version of the talks in real time to his followers.

Participation in various online communities takes time. Followers in each network will expect regular updates. But anyone who spends too much time on such stuff is not attending to the day job.

Those entrepreneurs who tweet relentlessly throughout the day on trivia have obviously lost the plot. Indeed, one of the great executive skills for the 21st century is the ability to prioritise – to screen out the froth and concentrate on the issues that really matter. The internet has made this task much harder. Indeed, I would worry that someone who is too web savvy might be a procrastinator, always online and never actually doing anything.

Of course no one knows how much of this activity might prove to be a fad.

Technology is certainly fickle: while Google+ was being hailed as the Second Coming only months ago (it only took 17 days after launch for Forbes to publish “A Eulogy for Google Plus”), last week the BBC reported that traffic was down 60 per cent from its peak after the launch.

Armies of expert consultants are springing up daily to provide expensive guidance to the executive suite about using social media tools. Most such advice can be had for free online.

But however they do it, entrepreneurs who want to break through should join the party.

Meanwhile, I am still working on my tweeting @LukeJohnsonRCP – any advice gratefully received.

lukej@riskcapitalpartners.co.uk

The writer runs Risk Capital Partners, a private equity firm, and is chairman of the Royal Society of Arts. He is the author of ‘Start it Up’.