When I speak, it’s almost exclusively to entrepreneurs turned CEOs or “hired guns” – the CEOs/COOs hired by the entrepreneur because they know they can’t (or don’t want to) grow a company. You can guess where that audience typically lies…50+ white men. So you can also guess the resistance I get when I begin to talk about the shift in how we communicate and how technology is not going away, but it’s here to make us more productive and efficient.

Imagine this pretty little girl who comes in and tells them their whole world is changing before their eyes and it’s time to take their heads out of the sand and pay attention. Imagine she begins to tell them their employees won’t talk to them – they want to text and iChat instead. Imagine she tells them the way they’ve always pushed sales out to their audiences no longer works. Would you shake your head and say, “She’s not my generation. She doesn’t know hard work.”? They do. Continue Reading »

Did anyone else see the Newsweek article that discusses all the reasons why a CEO should not be on the social networks? The one that says, “the social media advocates have reached the point where they believe that the sun rises and sets on the interactions among their members“?

If not, read it here.

While fully realizing I am not a Fortune 100 CEO (yet), I run a business, I have staff, I have people who have left, I even have employees who have been “sacked”, and there are lots of people out there who don’t find me amusing or intelligent (much to my mother’s dismay).

Yet, I have a presence online because it’s pertinent to the brand and because people want to have access to the people who run the organizations they buy from…they don’t want to talk to the PR department or to customer service. They want to tweet Zappos and know they’re talking to their CEO.

There are CEOs who do a phenomenal job of using the social networks, even though they might have angry shareholders, unhappy customers, and even “sacked” employees.

I don’t agree with the Newsweek article stating that the Fortune 100 CEOs should not be on social networks. Consumers are even more skeptical today of large corporatations and the ONLY person who can change that perception is the CEO. If they’re absent from the discussion, it only is going to create more problems for the companies.

As I always say…this is not Gini Dietrich’s trend. People are moving online, and at rapid paces. It’s time to get out there and communicate with ALL of your constituents.