As presidential digital leadership evolves, marketing leaders and their teams are more likely to support an executive social media presence. Even if you haven’t done this in the past, presidents change, and each change in leadership brings with it a change in social media presence. Being a leader on social media without a strategic focus is risky, and every executive should have a thoughtful approach to their online presence. Marketing leaders can help guide and mold the presidential approach to social media.
In my book Social Media Strategy Fundamentals, I outline four ways to support an executive’s social media presence. I’m sharing them here to give you a quick reference guide to determining the appropriate approach to support your president or chancellor and provide data you can reference while supporting them.
There’s no right way to support your campus leaders’ social media presence; the best choice for each leader depends on a variety of factors, including their leadership style, comfort with social media platforms, personal prioritization of digital leadership, and charisma.
Consider which approach will be most valuable to your president or other key executives and use it to create your strategy.
The all-star executive is comfortable using social media, and may already have an active account before they join your leadership team. Because they’ve participated in online communities, they can be trusted to create content and engage in an authentic way. Just because they have it together and are comfortable doesn’t mean you should leave them alone, though. In fact, sometimes marketers and communicators in this situation feel pressure to keep up with their president. With an all-star, communication is key.
An executive should be part of the campus digital ecosystem, and you can make sure they participate in the way that feels best to them.
All-stars are still part of a team. Provide the right support and let them know what you need from them to do it. Learn how Linfield University worked with their All Star, President Davis, in Chapter 18 of Fundamentals of Social Media Strategy: A Guide for College Campuses.
Whether new to your campus (a rookie) or a long-time member of administration, many senior leaders are just warming up to the idea of a public social media presence. They may reach out to talk about possibilities, or you may be surprised to suddenly find they’ve created an account. However they get on your radar, work with them to make sure they have a presence with purpose.
I recommend coaching your president and senior leaders to manage their own social media accounts. In our 2019 study, Examining Twitter Influence of Campus Executives, we found that the most influential executives managed their own accounts. These executives not only reached more people on social media, but they were more engaging. Similarly, in Josie Ahlquist’s Digital Leadership for Higher Education, you’ll read profiles of executives all over the world who practice excellent digital leadership by managing their own accounts. If your president’s first request is to create and manage accounts for them, push back politely and start a conversation about goals and desired outcomes. That’s the first thing you should coach your executive on, anyway.
With this approach, your executive will require a significant portion of your time and attention for anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, and then less-intensive, but consistent check-ins afterwards. Learn how Emma Gilmartin coached the Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow on page 242 of Fundamentals of Social Media Strategy: A Guide for College Campuses.
If you’re already overworked, it may not be possible to devote this time and attention to coaching an executive. Don’t give up! Acknowledge your resource constraints and encourage your executive to pursue the next approach, private coaching.
You may not have the bandwidth to support your executive, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get support from somewhere. Many senior leaders both inside and outside higher ed have an executive coach. Why not consider a digital leadership coach? While I’m sure there are others doing this work, I’m flying the Dr. Josie Ahlquist flag here and recommending you refer your senior leaders to her. She has a variety of services, including a self-paced course, guided three-month coaching program, and executive social strategist services. Josie is an expert on leadership, higher ed, and social media. You couldn’t ask for a better person to trust as a coach for your senior leaders.
Even if your executive never works with Josie, encourage them to join her Connected Exec Community on Facebook. It’s a place to support current and aspiring higher ed executives who want to engage, influence and lead online, on campus, and in life.
If you’d like to go further, and consider how you may incorporate a presidential digital leadership strategy into an institutional brand strategy, Campus Sonar can support presidential digital leadership as a key initiative in a strategic partnership, pairing expert coaching with social listening data that provides real-time insight and feedback.
In baseball, one spot in the lineup is for the designated hitter. They don’t have to worry about playing in the outfield, they just show up and hit pitches. If your president doesn’t have the time, interest, or ability to manage their social media account but still has relevant goals they could achieve through social media profiles, they may ask an expert to do it for them.
This approach won’t work for an under-resourced team—a campus social media manager cannot also be a presidential social media strategist. It’s also not a common approach—serving as the voice of a campus is challenging; accurately representing the voice of a living, breathing senior leader can be much harder. Differences between the executive social media strategist and the executive they speak for in both life and professional experience as well as attributes like age, gender identity, race, ethnicity all contribute to the challenge of this approach.
Gail Martineau, formerly the Senior Manager for Digital Media and Strategy in the Office of the President at Ohio State University supported President Michael Drake in this way for more than three years (until he left the university). During that time she helped him more than double his Twitter following and launch a LinkedIn and Spotify presence. My jaw dropped when Gail shared more about her work at the 2017 HighEdWeb Annual Conference and mentioned President Drake didn’t even know his passwords. To do this well, she had to get to know him as a person (Does he like coffee? What’s his favorite food?) and build trust so she could represent him authentically.
She coached him to take photos from his perspective when he was at events and text them to her, although she often traveled alongside him. For three years, it was her full-time job to manage a Big Ten president’s social media presence.
At HighEdWeb, Gail shared three tips for social media professionals who manage a president’s social media presence.
I’ll add a fourth: recognize the investment required to make this approach work.
If your executive wants to be influential (maximizing for both reach and engagement), our data shows you’re most likely to achieve that goal if the executive manages their social media accounts themselves. So pursue one of the first three models listed. That doesn’t mean you can’t coach them, or help them with their content strategy (you’re an expert—you should offer your expertise), but they should publish the content and engage with their audience.
If your goal is simply to have an official presence to promote campus and add a bit of humanity to your leader, staff-managed social media accounts may be the best way to go but require more time and investment in support staff.