02.6.2024 Ryan Humphreys
68% of employees prefer to work for leaders who use social media, according to Brunswick research.
And 60% of prospective employees research a potential employer on LinkedIn before applying for a role. When they see that employer as active, transparent, and personable, it improves the leader’s personal brand and the company’s employer brand.
In one of our LinkedIn Live episodes, Tribal’s Sarah Winter spoke to Sara Atkinson, EMEA Director of Field and Channel Marketing at Ciena, about why it’s essential senior leaders use social media in 2023.
You can listen to the full interview below, or read the summary of what they discussed in this blog.
Why Leadership Presence Is Your Secret Weapon
Sara explained that it’s critical leaders are digitally savvy and have an online presence, especially now, with so many employees working remotely or hybrid. They’re not as visible as they used to be, so leaders’ personal branding is key to business success.
When leaders post on social, it’s a great way for them to communicate with employees and get their thoughts out there. Employees love seeing leaders share their values, business priorities, and industry perspectives.
It’s also key to talent acquisition – leaders posting on LinkedIn means they share their personal values and are their authentic selves. This gives potential candidates an insight into the business. They get to see leaders being open, transparent, and human.
How To Make Leaders More Digitally Savvy
Ciena use EveryoneSocial as its employee advocacy platform.
They also have a comprehensive sales enablement training program that everyone gets access to. This includes information on how to use LinkedIn effectively.
Leadership gets more bespoke training, working with Tribal one-to-one. This helps leaders understand the value of being active on social media. It also makes sure their profile reflects who they are as businesspeople and humans.
Sara said it’s critical leaders buy in to this process. It’s a partnership between marketing, Tribal, and the leadership team.
When Tribal started working with Ciena’s leaders and providing the right support, they found other people sat up to take notice.
Sara had this to say about working with Tribal:
“When Tribal Impact started providing the support we needed, what we found is that other people were suddenly sitting up and taking a bit of notice. Suddenly our general manager had a fantastic LinkedIn profile and was posting regularly with great engagement. He was bought into it. He believed in it. That message then trickled across the leadership team and that’s how we’ve been able to expand the program.”
Leadership And Talent Acquisition
Sarah shared a surprising statistic: 52% of gen Z and millennial employees were predicted to change jobs in 2022 (Yahoo Finance). That’s one of the reasons Ciena started leadership activation. It’s always been about attracting and retaining talent for them. This is an effective way to do that.
Leaders who post more regularly on LinkedIn can demonstrate the unique and special culture at Ciena, where it’s all about people.
Ciena’s leaders are also very authentic in their posts. What better way to attract talent than showing them who they could work for being their true selves and sharing their values?
How To Measure The Success Of Leaders On Social Media
Ciena receive regular reports from Tribal. These show the most recent posts and the stats around them such as engagement, impressions, comments, and how people’s SSI scores have changed.
The reports also demonstrate if using LinkedIn provides value. This information can inspire future post ideas because the stats show which post types resonate with their audience, and which are less successful.
Ciena also gets anecdotal feedback from leaders and more broadly at the company about their leadership activation and how it’s going.
How Social Media Can Boost Leaders’ Personal Brands
Ciena has five leaders engaged with Tribal’s program, spread around the world. We worked with each leader to understand their priorities and what they wanted to post about. They shared themes they’re passionate about to inform the content – nobody tells them what to post.
One of the leaders involved found it hard to post regularly with her busy agenda.
In her first post, she posted about her passion for giving back and creating bridges for young talent.
After a month, she saw a 16% increase in her SSI score and an almost 10% increase in followers and connections. Her first post received over 10,000 impressions, 284 likes, and 34 comments.
An important part of the success of these posts is that leaders respond to any comments. This maintains the authenticity.
Sara’s found that when leaders see high engagement on their posts, it encourages them to keep posting. They see that it’s worth their time investment to keep going because it gives them an external voice and helps them connect with their employees.
We’ve collected some more examples here of other successful leaders on LinkedIn.
Leaders On Social Media Are Key To Your Talent Acquisition And Retention
Leaders on social media is a crucial part of talent acquisition in 2023. Future candidates get to see what the company they could work for is like, helping attract more qualified candidates.
And employees get to know their leaders better, giving a boost to employee engagement, especially in remote or hybrid workplaces.
If you’d like help getting your leaders on social media, find out more about our leadership services.
