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Greetings from Mumbai, India. I've been in India for the past week as a guest of The Nasscom Foundation in India, the epicenter of nonprofit technology and social innovation. I gave a presentation during the Global CSR track at the Indian Leadership Forum in Mumbai on February 11th. I also lead two workshops for NGO and CSR practitioners. I also facilitated an "unconference" session on the topic of "Should CEOs Use Social Media?"
In preparation for this session, I asked colleagues in the US to share their collective wisdom so we could see the US perspective. In addition, during a roundtable on social media at the conference, I was fortunate to meet social media experts in India (@nirav@amnigos @pranavbhasin @paritoshsharma and @avinashraghava ) who shared some examples.
In order for social media to have full impact, it needs to scale within an organization. Your organization's social media strategy should be not implemented by one lonely intern sitting in the corner of your communications and marketing department.
You may be wondering if that means that your executive director and CEO needs to write a blog or have their own Twitter account to share their wisdom. I think it depends.
There are definitely some benefits to having your executive director or CEO being present on social media channels. They can provide a human face to your organization's work, a unique viewpoint, and serve as a thought leader in your field. And if your organization finds itself in the middle of groundswell or if there is a major news event or a public relations crisis happens and it is being discussed on Twitter or other social media spaces, your CEO can join it without having to get up to speed.
But it is also important to understand that there are definitely challenges to be overcome as well. These includes investing the time to make it successful because a CEO presence on social media is nothing that should be "ghost" written. It has to be authentic, reflect the CEO's personality. There is also the issue of comfort - both with the technology and being transparent.
Here are some good examples of CEO and Executive Director use of social media in the US social sector:
Holly Ross is the executive director of NTEN, the nonprofit technology network in the US. She uses Twitter to share what's going on at NTEN, announce new initiatives, and have conversations with NTEN members. She often uses Twitter to get ideas and feedback on NTEN's various programs. Checking her Twitter stream and sharing some tweets probably takes her 15 to 20 minutes a day and is part of daily routine.
Holly also shares more of her in-depth thinking about the nonprofit technology field on NTEN's blog. It is not a "CEO" blog where she writes daily, but a blog that includes the voices of NTEN staff and members. This is a good option for CEO's who don't have the time or bandwidth to write a whole blog along, but still want to be present in the blogosphere.
Holly's Twitter account is her personal but it is clearly branded as NTEN. Even the user name, "ntenhross" incorporates her organization's brand. This is a good example of a "Blended profile."
Reeta Roy, president and CEO of the MasterCard Foundation, is sending tweets from her site visit to Uganda and Kenya. As background, the mandate of the $2 billion Foundation is to enable people living in poverty to improve their lives by expanding their access to microfinance and education. Reeta is currently in Uganda, where she’s learning first-hand about the Foundation’s partnerships and programs. While the account is the Foundation's branded Twitter account, she is using it for a project to report on their work in the field.
This is an example of a good idea of how to get your CEO started tweeting. Have them Tweet from the organizational branded account for a specific project. This will help learn the work flow, have more comfort, and see first hand if the social media presence provides a benefit for the organization's work.
At a roundtable, I had to chance to discuss this question with social media experts from India. They pointed out a couple of examples from India.
Anand Mahindra s the vice chairman and managing director, Mahindra Group, a large corporation in India. He
