Is An Expert Social Kickstart Program The Sweet Spot For Busy Executives?

Authenticity is the name of the game on social media, meaning social media training and coaching are fast replacing fully managed services. But are they always mutually exclusive? Is there a way to balance the best of both worlds when you need busy executives and experts to start making an impact, now?

The Brunswick Connected Leadership Report 2020 shows that both employees and financial readers expect a CEO to be active on social media and that it has a significant impact on how trusted they are. Globally, employees trust a leader who is active on social media 5x more than one who is not and that figure rises to 9x for financial readers. Yet only 51% of employees say that their leaders use social media to connect with them.

The current climate has accelerated the need for executives to become connected leaders. From the COVID-19 crisis to issues of diversity and inclusion and even politics, executives are expected to be seen and heard on social media. Meanwhile, marketers need to activate technical experts to cut through the noise of content out there with credible content.

This may explain why our fully managed social media expert kickstart program is now one of our most popular services. Many organisations need to quickly build the social momentum for high-profile professionals who are too busy to put training and coaching into practice until they’re seen first-hand the impact it can bring. And they can’t afford to risk their reputation through trial and error.

If you’re considering whether to give your leaders and experts a kickstart on their social media journey, we’ve put together a quick guide covering the most common questions we get from prospective clients and those taking part.

At A Glance: What Is A Social Media Expert Kickstart Package?

A social media kickstart package is a fully managed social media service that helps busy leaders and experts accelerate their social impact in an authentic and credible way.

It’s a fully tailored and holistic service that goes beyond simply sharing content:

• At the outset we hold a discovery call with experts and leaders to understand their differentiation value, audience, personal goals, business objectives, topics of interest and favourite publications.
• After this, we create an Expert Passport – their personalized blueprint for
  success - which includes recommendations for social profile optimization and outlines the best topics, decision makers to target, hashtags, and more.
• We then begin with personalized content curation, writing social posts, social sharing, social listening, and influencer and prospect engagement strategies. See exactly what is included in our expert social kickstart package here.

Hands-Off Versus Hands-On

Some social media services are fully 'hands off' but today that’s not enough to build credible, authentic and connected leaders. To get the best results from the program, your experts and leaders need to view the program as a kickstart to their social journey, as the name suggests. They will need to invest some time in reviewing content and reports/recommendations, engaging with others’ content and building their network.

The end goal of a kickstart is to empower experts and leaders to take ownership over their social media presence, with staged handovers and ongoing coaching and support as needed.

How Much Time Do They Need to Invest?

The initial discovery call takes around an hour. This is where we discover more about the expert and their goals and preferences and produce an ‘Expert Passport’ - their tailored plan for social success.

Once they’ve reviewed this and signed it off, the experts don’t need to do that much. The content and social posts are curated and written for them and they review them each week in a social media scheduling tool. How much there is to review depends on whether they opt for the full kickstart or the lite version of 3 tweets and one LinkedIn post per week.

Naturally, at the beginning there may be more tweaks to perfect their tone of voice and, as the program continues, you’ll often find that experts get more involved with their posts. However, reviewing and approving content usually take between 15-30 minutes a week.

What Happens When The Program Ends? Leaders Are Still Busy...

Throughout the program, we establish a structure for the executive and test different content and topic themes. So when the program concludes the expert knows what good looks like, knows how much time it takes, and understands the impact their social activity can make.

It’s much easier to embed these habits into your daily life once you can see it’s worthwhile. And, often without them realizing, we embed social actions into their daily lives, step-by-step.

Who’s A Kickstart Most Suitable For?

A social media kickstart is an investment and most organizations will reserve it for leadership or subject matter experts. People already look up to them internally and they are often well-placed to humanize the brand and build relationships with influencers - meaning the impact of the program will be higher. And, while leaders and experts, are often keen to grow their social presence they are often the ones with the least time in an organization – and the ones who can’t afford to risk their carefully built reputation through trial and error.

How Do You Protect Each  Professional's Reputation? 

Leaders and experts have spent years getting to the top of their profession and so naturally one of the biggest concerns that they have is the risk to their reputation and how much control they have over their online presence.

The initial briefing call and Expert Passport review ensures we understand their individual expertise, interests and replicate their tone of voice. Even though the process helps ensure we create credible and authentic content, the expert always reviews and approves content. They can also tweak the content or ask for amends, too.

What Can You Expect At The End Of The Program?

Four months doesn’t seem that long and so you may wonder what is achievable in that time. Quite a lot, in fact:

• LinkedIn Social Selling Index scores increase to 60+
• Increase in quality follower count in an organic, measured way (we don’t buy followers)
• Recognition within the industry as social savvy thought leader
• Identifying and connecting with other sector influencers
• Deepened relationships with customers, partners and prospects
  
  

As we’ve said, organisations always see the best results when they don’t drag leaders and experts into the expert social kickstart program.

Here’s what one of our kickstart client's had to say about the experience and the social impact we helped him create:

“I focused on delivering key objectives when I first started this role. It left little time to write blogs and manage our social media channels, leaving me unsure if my efforts were productive. Enrolling on your Kick Start Programme turned it around.

It's called Kick Start yet the speed of rollout and initial results was faster than even I imagined. You involved me at every stage so that all activities were aligned with my goals, and your regular reports showed the growing
momentum.

After four months, you over-delivered on the promised outcomes and handed me the confidence and onus to take the lead. As we continue to work together, I am delighted my LinkedIn SSI score hovers around 75 and my profile views are up by 430%. I am now seen as a thought leader within and outside of our company. Many sales and marketing colleagues have also become active on social media on the back of my results.”

If you follow Tribal Impact on social media, you’ll know that we’re firm advocates of activating your employees and leaders to become the talking point of your brand in their own words. Our training and coaching programs are carefully tailored according to where they are in their social media maturity journey and the goals and motivations of different teams and employees.

It therefore may seem contradictory to offer a fully-managed service but it’s really a hybrid approach. The ultimate goal is to enable your experts and leaders to continue creating a social impact once they’ve seen what good looks like for them. We optimize their social media blueprint of activity so that they can hit the ground running when they’re ready to do so.