Banishing the fear: A leader's guide to social media

Garreth Hanley:
This is INTHEBLACK, a leadership strategy and business podcast brought to you by CPA Australia. Hello, I'm Garreth Hanley and welcome to INTHEBLACK. Today we'll be speaking with Rita Zonius about social media for people who hate it and why social media is an important communications tool for leaders and organisations.

Rita is a communication and digital workplace expert who teaches professionals how to use social media and shows them why it's important for their communication strategy as well as their career. She's the certified strategic communication management professional and she's worked with McKinsey & Company and the ANZ Banking Group. And in 2017, Rita founded the Enterprise Social Engineer, a consultancy that focuses on communication and change, and supports organisations to become more collaborative and socially engaged in the digital age.

Rita's passion is helping leaders overcome their fears around social media so they can become confident, purposeful users. She's counselled CEOs and leaders in manufacturing, consumer goods, higher education, property development, the not-for-profit sector and accounting and finance. Welcome to INTHEBLACK, Rita.

Rita Zonius SCMP:
Hi Garreth, thanks for having me.

Garreth Hanley:
It's great to have you with us. Rita, maybe let's just start with, can you tell us a bit about why you focus on social media?

Rita Zonius SCMP:
I focus on social media because we are living in a connected world. We are engaging online. We're not really coming together face-to-face in the way that we used to before the pandemic. But because we're living in this connected world, it's important to have a digital presence. A considered digital presence because I'm looking you up whether you like it or not. So if you are not on social media today, then you are really missing out.

Garreth Hanley:

So there's just no escape?

Rita Zonius SCMP:
There is no escape. So given that's the deal today, it's essential to stand up a basic social media profile. LinkedIn is a great place to start, especially for professionals in the world. There are a billion people on the platform. It's a fantastic place to position yourself and let the world know who you are, what you stand for, what you're good at, and how you can help.

So the bottom line is, yeah, I am looking you up whether you like it or not. So show me something that's going to tell me your story, your professional story, and how you can help me. And it helps you build your own credibility and your personal brand as well. So, it's a win-win.

Garreth Hanley:
We're here talking about social media for people who hate it and people generally don't use things they don't like, so I guess they're not putting themselves out there for people to check their profiles. In your experience, why are people hesitant and maybe even afraid to use social media?

Rita Zonius SCMP:
You can understand why people are afraid because you just have to look at some of the slips, trips and falls that people have made in social media. So we see all of these accidents happening and say, "Well, I'm not going there. I don't want to be like those people." But deeper than that, I think the reason we are fearful is something that's been ingrained in us over many, many years, even before we've hit the world of work.

And that is we're told generally when you're at school, be good, be quiet, only speak when the teacher asks you to speak. And so I think we've actually taken some of these old rules and ways of living into our working lives. So this idea that you would shine a spotlight on yourself is somehow in the minds of some people seen as an unsavoury thing to do. It's not a nice thing to do to talk about ourselves. It doesn't position us well.

However, what I would say to people who are hesitant or who are afraid to show up in social media is that we learn a lot through our working lives. You know in instant, as an accountant, if I do A, B will happen in an instant. Whereas if I'm an up and coming accountant and I have 10 or 15 years less experience than you, I don't know some of those things. So the things often that we feel are commonplace or just sort of boring are someone else's gold dust.

And so it's about understanding that it's not about you and shining a light in yourself. Appearing in social media, sharing what you know is a wonderful helpful thing you can do to help others. And when you help others and you give of yourself selflessly without expecting anything in return, that's what builds your impact and your credibility. So you will end up building your personal brand without having to make it a bright spotlight that you shine on yourself.

So I've found in my experience in coaching more than a thousand people one-on-one, senior leaders all over the world, it doesn't matter where they're from, they do have this same anxiety and I do think it's deep-seated. So what I want to say is this is about rewiring yourself a little to think of the wonderful positive opportunities that can come out of stepping into social media and sharing what you know.

Garreth Hanley:
I really like that reframing, that moving from thinking that you're showboating to helping other people, that there's actually a different underlying reason for engaging. I think maybe some of that comes from the fact that there is a lot of selling on social media and there's people's personal accounts. And maybe can we talk a little bit about the difference between brand and business social media accounts and the accounts that employees or people have. I'm wondering if they do connect or are they mutually exclusive.

Rita Zonius SCMP:
As it's important for individuals to have a digital footprint in today's world, brands absolutely have to have that as well. In terms of the intersection between brand, social media profiles, and personal accounts, at the end of the day, people like to talk to people. So absolutely, the marketers and the communicators in our organisations want us to have a brand presence.

However, it's the individuals in your organisation that can help you to amplify what's going on there. It's the individuals with a strong digital presence that can be your best brand ambassadors. So that's where I see the different sides. People want to talk to people as well. You'll get far more reach on an individual account of someone telling a story that might be brand related there than you would on a brand simply posting something on LinkedIn.

So I think they're both important. They do operate in slightly different ways, but where organisations can put their arms around people and help them build capability to be brand ambassadors, it's wonderful for both sides of the equation, great for individuals and great for the organisations themselves and their brands.

Garreth Hanley:
Would you say that the best brands are actually moving to knowledge sharing rather than selling because that's what works?

Rita Zonius SCMP:
You can't just go online and start selling. It takes time to build trust and credibility among the people who you want to buy your services or your products. And so I think brands have moved to position themselves differently on social media these days. And at the end of the day, it depends on your purpose, so why you're in social media. Is LinkedIn going to be the best platform for you to use? Is it going to be TikTok? Is it going to be Instagram?

If we focus on the most professional platform, which is LinkedIn, I do see a shift in brands becoming better storytellers in talking about their brand through the lens of a narrative, a story rather than a hard sell of a product. From an individual perspective too, I'm still seeing some people who are trying to sell one-on-one. You know yourself you get messages in LinkedIn from people who they connect with you and then two minutes later they're trying to sell you something.

The bottom line is in both of those situations, for brands and for individuals, you've got to build your credibility, show up, tell your stories, tell them often. Add your opinion, add your insight, add your advice, this is what works. I believe when you focus on sharing those things, insight, opinion, advice, things that are helpful that help people to get something done or to progress their career, those things will enable you to then sell down the track. To me, that's where the focus should be. And for individuals, I can say to them, don't worry too much about the hard sell or the end game.

Position yourself, offer your insights, your opinion and your advice and these other things will follow, but it takes time. You cannot expect to do this in a week. It's interesting to me how people think they can be on LinkedIn for a week and expect marvellous outcomes. It doesn't work that way. This is a game of showing up regularly, sharing what you know regularly and doing it over time, not expecting too much in the early days. And the good stuff will surely follow, but you need to do the hard work up front. It doesn't come easily.

Garreth Hanley:
You mentioned trust there and we're also talking about fear of engaging in social media. When social media first came up, businesses were providing people with lengthy social media policies and some businesses were just saying, "Look, we don't want our employees on social media." So it's been 15 years now. Has this changed over that time? Or do you think businesses should still be providing guidance policies or training to their people?

Rita Zonius SCMP:
I do think a lot has shifted in the world in terms of organisations seeing the value and the benefit in building social media capability in their people. I mean, number one, it's great. It's great professional development. So in fact, if you offer that, it will help your staff engagement as well because people can see that you are investing in it, so that's one benefit. I do think that the social media policies of old though were pretty scary, and so I think people were so fearful because they read them and thought, "I can't do anything here."

I think there are still some things that remain in force. It's important to maintain, for example, confidentiality of sensitive information, not to share, put things out in the public domain that are not able to be shared. To be respectful, to abide by your organization's code of conduct, all of those things still remain in place. What I do see is that there is more interest in organisations wanting to activate their people as brand ambassadors, and so providing them with the social media training and explaining, "Here's what you can do," rather than talk about it in a scary way of, "Here's all the 20 things that you can't do." I think those things are having more of a positive impact on organisations and that is helping.

So I do think that the training is super important, but it's a spectrum. It's a spectrum. So there are organisations who are really good at this and are often and running, but we're still seeing organisations that are just on the beginning of this journey as well, and everything in between. So there isn't just one level of capability building that's going on in here. Some organisations have been doing this for a long time, others not for long, but it's all very important. We're living in the digital world, in a connected world. Building social media capability in your people demonstrates that they understand how to operate in a digital environment, and that's a good thing.

Garreth Hanley:
We've been talking about social media, I guess, outside the box, outside the organization. But you've also done a lot of work with what's known as enterprise social networks. Can you give us a quick overview of what an enterprise social network is and then maybe explain how they can help businesses?

Rita Zonius SCMP:
Enterprise social network are tools like Viva Engage, Workplace by Facebook, which is now I believe defunct, Slack. All of these tools that help us to get work done in a connected world. It's interesting to me because I was heavily into these tools well before there was a sniff of a pandemic coming along. But during the pandemic, all of a sudden organisations panicked.

All their people were out working in a distributed way, working at home, and so a lot of these tools were foisted upon organisations and on people as a way of being able to operate and navigate the pandemic and get our work done. I think these tools are fabulous because when you work out loud and in an open way, you have greater ability to collaborate, solve problems, connect on a cultural level.

There are many things that you can get done in enterprise social network tools which are not that different to some external facing tools like LinkedIn. So I do think that these are super important. The problem is in the pandemic these tools were foisted upon people in a panic as I mentioned. And unfortunately, you cannot just turn on these tools and organisations and expect them to work. And so I do think unfortunately, enterprise social networks might be suffering from a little bit of reputation damage because of that. But what I want to say is a tool is just a tool.

How you integrate it into your organisation is where the magic happens. So if you've had an accident with your enterprise social tool that's not working as well, there's four areas to look at to lift it. One is to make sure that you have leaders as role models. When people see their leaders in there, ‘what interests my leader fascinates me’ as the saying goes. So leaders as role models, maybe going in once a week and sharing, "Now this is what I've been doing this week. These are the customers that I've gone and visited" with a couple of pictures. It brings a senior leader who is sitting many levels away from somebody to the forefront of the picture, and a closer connection can be established between employees and those leaders. Second, it's about having purposeful communities of practice.

So really thinking about places that you create that are nurtured and managed by community managers. So there is a resourcing piece. So to the point of you can't just turn on the technology and expect it to perform miracles, your community manager is like a programmer at a radio station. They think about, "What content are we going to talk about in here? How do we gather groups of people who are trying to solve the same problems in here?" And it can be a wonderful thing, especially if you're geographically dispersed. You can use these tools to follow the sun.

There's nothing better than posting a problem in an enterprise social network before you go home for the night, waking up the next morning, coming into work and finding that five people who you don't know on the other side of the world in your organisation have the very answer to your problem. The problem with sending emails, and this is why I like enterprise social networking and working out loud and in the open in a more transparent way more than email, when we send emails around to try and find the answer to a question, we have already determined who we think will have the answer by virtue of the distribution list.

Whereas enterprise social is this wonderful serendipitous way of working where you can put the problem out there and see what goodness you get back. You have no idea where the answer's going to come from, but sometimes the most amazing answer to your question will come from a place you didn't think it would come from. So these tools are productive, they're fun, they can help organisations be efficient, but it is a point of putting up leaders as role models, having purposeful communities of practice, educating people in how to use the tools.

And then communicating the success stories also works. So there's nothing better than sharing a story such as the one I shared around follow the sun, post a problem, go to sleep, wake up in the morning. When people see real life examples of how enterprise social networks can work successfully, they're more inclined to give it a go.

Garreth Hanley:
It is a bit of a different way of working from emails, that's for sure.

Rita Zonius SCMP:
100%. It is a different way of working, and I also think it does come back to this fear factor of people being afraid to put themselves out there. But let me also say this, if you're still fearing posting in LinkedIn, your enterprise social network is sort of a safer, smaller version because you can put yourself out there within the confines of your organisation and build your brand, your personal presence that way. These are fantastic tools for that, especially if you're ambitious and you're looking for your next role inside your organisation, there's nothing better than sharing what, sharing helpful tips.

Positioning yourself as an expert in something inside your organisation can often lead to you being tapped on the shoulder for your next opportunity. The spoiler alert here is, if we don't do these things and we don't put ourselves out there, then nothing will happen, guaranteed 100%. So it's worth dipping a toe in the water just to see what happens. Something amazing could happen, but nothing will happen if we don't take that plunge.

Garreth Hanley:
Do you have some tips for our listeners who no longer hate social media but don't know where to start now that they don't hate it anymore?

Rita Zonius SCMP:
Okay, now I've energised people who've listened to this. Here are some tips for you. First, if you don't have a LinkedIn profile or it's not a very good profile, go ahead and stand up a best practice profile. So I like to call it using the LinkedIn profile from the head to the toes. So start at the top with a great profile picture, banner, a catchy headline. Fill out the about section sharp succinct story of your professional life that explains who you are and what you like to do. Also, don't be afraid to connect some things that you like to do outside of your organisation.

You are more than your job title, so bring those things in. If you're volunteering or you have interests and hobbies outside, bring those into the picture. We're human beings, not just work machines. And then go down further. Fill out your profile. Then think about what is it you want to talk about. Sit down and define your content pillars. You may never get there. It may be for some people they want to stand up the profile and they just want to use social media tools to listen and learn from others and not engage. That's okay. However, I would love to encourage people to dip a toe in the water and to share what they know. But sharing what you know starts with defining what it is you want to talk about, what is it that you're good at, what is it that people tap you on the shoulder about.

They're great questions to ask yourself, and it only needs to be two or three things, not 50 things. We cannot possibly be good at 50 things. Two or three things only. And then it's about sharing insights, opinions, giving a bit of advice that's related to those topics. It could be that you read an interesting story in the newspaper, you might share that, add your insight on your opinion. I'm all for people adding, if you're going to share other content from journals or newspapers, et cetera, or podcasts you listen to, then add your insight at the top to explain to your connections why you think this is valuable. So always come from a point of value. And remember to engage, social media by virtue of its nature is social.

So it's not a one-way street in which we just push stuff out and then say, "Talk to the hand." Social media is a multi-directional freeway, if you like, conversations, going at different speeds all over the place in different directions, so engage as well. Go and engage when you see some interesting content that someone else has posted. And have fun. Relax and have fun. But I can tell you, if you stand up a good profile, define your content pillars, dip a toe in the water, this can be a productive and amazing place for people to build their personal brand and also help be great brand ambassadors for the organisations they work for.

Garreth Hanley:
Thank you. I think that love it or hate it, social media is here to stay. And from what you've said, Rita, it really sounds like reframing the why and embracing technology can lead to really good things. So thanks so much for joining us on the podcast and sharing your insights with us today.

Rita Zonius SCMP:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Garreth Hanley:
It was great to have you. And thank you for listening to INTHEBLACK. Don't forget to check the show notes for resources on the CPA Australia and INTHEBLACK websites and links to everything we've mentioned in this episode. And until next time, thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, help others discover INTHEBLACK by leaving us a review and sharing this episode with colleagues, clients, or anyone else interested in leadership, strategy, and business.

To find out more about our other podcasts, check out the show notes for this episode. And we hope you can join us again next time for another episode of INTHEBLACK.