How To Build Trust Around Your Leadership On Social Media

Making sure your leadership team is active on social media offers benefits for the entire company, from expanded brand reach to increased sales and higher employee engagement. But there’s one condition: your followers have to trust them.  

I’ve partnered with Hubbub, the LinkedIn content and creative hub by Transmission, to explore the ways your brand can take advantage of the growth opportunity in trust. So, as marketers, how can you help your leaders build their presence in an authentic way? 

Small steps first 

Before you can build trust around your leadership on platforms like LinkedIn, you have to actually convince them that being more active on social media offers tangible benefits.

Leadership teams often aren’t as active as they should be, but building their presence is crucial for several reasons: 

1. If other employees see their leaders being active on social media, they’re more likely to be active themselves – earning some important promotion for your company 
2. Employees increasingly want to work for a business whose values match their own. Executive social media presences not only help to save on talent acquisition costs, but also help to attract a higher calibre of employee too 
3. Work is no longer limited to the office and getting leadership to engage more on social media shows that they’re listening to employees and shining a light on those doing good work 
4. Leaders’ activity on social media can support the sales team, opening doors to conversations with target decision makers 

The importance of trust 

Once your leaders are more active on social media, it’s all about ensuring they’re trusted. The more visible and accessible they are on these channels, the more trusted they become among stakeholder audiences. But for too many leaders, fear and time can get in the way. 

They’re either fearful of saying something wrong, upsetting employees, not knowing how to respond or they view the whole exercise as a drain on their time: searching for content, composing posts and following up with comments. 

These worries are largely a product of inexperience. This is where you – as a marketeer – can help. 

3 steps to help your leaders be more active on social: 

Get their LinkedIn profile optimised 

Choose the right profile picture, add a creative background photo, make the headline more than a job title and write a summary that tells a story – rather than just listing their achievements. 

Get them sharing 

Leaders are often surprised at just how much engagement they get from employees, customers and prospects when they first start posting. Build on that welcome surprise by having them consistently share their thoughts and insights – focusing on quality over quantity. 

Get them engaging 

It’s obvious when a leader’s LinkedIn account is run by a partner that doesn’t know what they’re doing. They post out content on a regular schedule and don’t do much else. This opens you up to a credibility disaster that could affect the reputation of your leadership and even your brand itself.  

Whether you’re working with an agency, consultant or getting your leadership to post themselves, the key to success is rooted in being human and having good digital etiquette. Building the consistent habit of commenting, replying and sharing others’ posts is an important part of activating on social media. 

 Looking to learn more about building brand trust on LinkedIn? Check out Hubbub’s eBook on what it takes to build brand trust today. Alternatively, reach out to us at Tribal to see how we can help you get more of your leaders online faster.