Part of Helpful Digital
In a crisis situation the media, customers and shareholders won’t wait for the next news bulletin. They will expect to hear from your most senior leaders and experts.
CEOs, directors and expert voices must be empowered to use social media, in good times and bad.
Leaders need to be authentic on social media, rather than stage-managed. There’s an expectation that they are practitioners: able to push the buttons and respond quickly when required. Air Asia, Total Energies and others demonstrate the value in having their leaders speak online for themselves, using separate but aligned channels.
We help leaders:
We help organisations:
Our experience spans all sectors and levels of skills and confidence.
We’re proud to have supported the work of forward-thinking CEOs, presidents and their expert teams, as well as ambassadors and diplomats.
Coaching sessions and remote support to kick-start social media activity, or improve existing profiles
Briefing on the opportunities and risks of social media in a crisis, giving leaders what they need to know, to make informed decisions at critical moments
Bite sized learning and support to help leaders form habits that make social media sustainable and useful
The Social Simulator team presented a challenging case for why I needed to be on social media. Six weeks later I was super-grateful to have the ability – and confidence – to respond quickly to a breaking situation.
Social media is now firmly on my radar.
It isn’t easy for leaders to use their own voice on social media. Understandably, they feel loyal, or confined, to their organisation’s official tone.
Why is this a problem? Because posts become statements of intent instead of conversations. They risk making leaders appear emotionless or over-briefed and not in control.
Ask yourself – if you took posts from 3 leaders in your organisation and anonymised them, would staff know which tweet belonged to whom?
We provide advice on language, tone and general content, to help leaders (and their communications teams) cut through out-of-date policies and expectations, and speak in their own voice.
Credibility is often judged on first appearances: a leader’s social media profile, the frequency of their activity online and how they respond to individuals.
A credible leader provides as much relevant information as they can, and does so with passion and empathy. They’re using social media in good times and bad. They share interesting or fun elements of their personal lives and take an active interest in their audience and customers.
We coach leaders over days, weeks and months to help them develop a credible social media profile. Our clients adopt social media for finding and consuming news and analysis, networking, promoting their work – and responding quickly in a crisis.
Crisis response on social media works best when the whole organisation understands the opportunity and challenges online. Leaders need to buy-in to social media ad spend, be ready to use their channels to respond and step in front of a camera. They need sufficient knowledge of how people consume information online, for them to feel empowered. But, in most cases they don’t need to understand the detail of how content is created, edited and published.
We brief leadership teams on essential terminology, good practice and understanding of how their audience use social media to read and share information. We won’t patronise your colleagues, but we will challenge them to consider where they feel less confident and convince them that social media is an essential part of crisis response.
Email us now to set up a demonstration and discuss how we could support your training:
