CEO, How Important Is Social Media to Your Growth Strategy?

How can entrepreneurs determine if they should invest their critical resources in social media? If you’re a midmarket leader you may not be using social media to grow your business today. When will you know the time is right to jump in?

This is a question many of my clients have been asking recently. As an advisor to several senior level executives and directors, I try to find out what they hope to achieve using social media.

What role is social currently playing in their markets? As with all midmarket businesses, almost all of my clients have different points of view if social media is trend or something that has incredibly disruptive power to change their markets forever. My clients have many of the challenges you face on a regular basis, such as:

• Their business is becoming globalized with new competitors entering their markets on a regular basis
• They are competing to find, develop, and keep the best employees for their organizations
• Their customers are trying to commoditize their products and services offering
• Their key stakeholders are going through a major transformation as baby boomers retire and millennials play a larger role in their business’ success
• Your markets are being broken into more market segments with different needs for your many different customers
• They need stronger partners to compete in their markets

Sound familiar? I bet many of you face similar challenges. We are living in a time of tremendous change. How are you getting the best information to make your decisions? There is more information available today than ever before. How do you keep up?

I made a promise to you many years ago when I started this blog that I would work hard to help you keep up. I would provide you not only my best advice, but bring in other experts to help you grow and prosper. Successful midmarket organizations not only need to be good at understanding the bigger picture, but they need to be more agile in creating a successful business strategy. I believe social media can no longer be ignored by midmarket leaders.

It’s time for midmarket leaders to begin seizing the opportunities that social media can provide your organization. Not because it makes you hip and cool, but because if you don’t start now you may not only lose your current competitive edge, you may lose future market opportunities to organizations that leverage social media to connect with their many global stakeholders.

I’ve found a series called Virtual Perspectives that are designed to help entrepreneurs like you to keep up with the trends that are changing your business. Over the past six months, I’ve shared several of these free briefings from Deloitte Growth Enterprise Services. We got an amazing response to the programs. There is one coming up next week that you will want to attend. It’s on social media and how it impacts your future growth opportunities in your midmarket business today and moving forward into the future.

I’ve included the link to the next program called, “Can social media give your mid-market company a competitive advantage?” This program is hosted by Roger Nanny, Leader of Deloitte Growth Enterprise Services, and Liz Claman, anchor of Countdown to the Closing Bell, serving as moderator for this fast paced lively discussion on social media and its implications for the middle market. The program includes the following leaders in this discussion:

Patrick Cassidy, New Balance’s global digital brand marketing and social media leader

Carlos Dominquez, President and COO of Sprinklr

Doug Palmer, Social Business practice leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP

Where:                 Deloitte’s YouTube channel

Hashtag:              #VirtualPerspectives

You can find more information on the program page including links to the different biographies and how to register for the event. This is a great group of leaders who are heavily involved in social media and the potential opportunities it can provide your organization.

After the event, I’ll do a follow up blog or blogs with the key takeaways from the presentation for our readers. Most of my clients have found my notes almost as valuable as the presentation they attended. I’ve had over 25,000 executives read and share my cheat sheet on what and, as importantly, how to implement what we’ve heard.  The best part is you can go back and share the presentation online with your team and have a guide to help you facilitate your team discussions.

You should also reach out to the online leaders to discuss questions you have, as well. This is a great opportunity for you to be brought up to speed quickly and get the answers you need.  You can find out more at Deloitte’s YouTube Channel.   You can also get a calendar link to put it on your calendar.

See you there next week where we will share our next blog on the key qualities of your strategic account leaders.