Essay Example on Social Media for Good Leadership: The Digital Advantage

Introduction

In the recent past social media has become a key tool in attaining good leadership across the united states. Leaders to do not use social media as a leisure tool instead they use it as part of their daily work since it enables them to remain connected to their specific areas of work, where they are passionate about and also enable them to learn and share ideas with their employees. Leader's digital asset, podcast, blogs, and social networking sites profiles tend to be very crucial since they help to determine the leader's online identity, and how the people relate and connect with him or her (Hoppe & Reinelt, 2010). Various organizations and institution leaders tend to have the ability to leverage either one or all social media sites to portray a positive leadership image to the rest of the workers. However, for the leaders to effectively leverage these media sites, they have to be constantly involved so that they can have enough time to interact with their workers. Being active on these social media sites helps the leaders to build their profile, and improve their reputation in the organization. This study aims to determine how to leverage social media as a leadership tool.

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How to Leverage Social Media as a Leadership Tool

Select the Right Social Media tools

The right social media tools should be selected or determined based on three key sets of criteria. These criteria include, first, the volume of the social media site. As a leader, it is important to select a media site where a lot of employees are active members and are also searching for individuals with your expertise. Having a large number of social media users helps one to interact, share, and discuss views with a large number of employees. For instance, in the united states, to effectively lead a large number of army officers across the country, the leaders must select a media site where most army officers are active members. This ensures that the leaders are interacting and sharing information with a large number of army officers. Secondly, the credibility of the social media site is very crucial in determining which media site to use and the kind of people one would want to interact with to improve his or her career (Mayfield, 2008). Thirdly, the relevancy of the social media site. The leaders should select a social media site that is relevant to the career that they are in. For instance, the united states army leaders should select a social media site that is only meant for the army officers. This will ensure that only the army officers are communicating and sharing information, and there is no possibility of any privacy breach.

Conduct a Situational Analysis

To leverage social media as a leadership tool, one must first be aware of his or her current stand. For instance, one should asses his or her life, the expected workplace responsibilities, and the number of resources needed to lead the entire team (Li, 2010). If you are an army leader, who is always busy performing the delegated duties one will not be able to spend much time leading the rest of the army officers using certain social media sites that are very engaging. Instead, one will be forced to use social media sites that do not need you to spend much time engaging or interacting with the rest of the workers. On the other hand, if you are an army leader who does not have many obligations to attend to, one may find a networking site that requires one to be constantly in touch with the rest of the staff or workers. Spending much time in the chosen the media site tends to be very crucial since it helps one to solve and discuss any issue that may arise within the workplace at any time. It also helps the leader to monitor the employee's progress closely and assess whether the leadership style that you portray.

Determine Your Persona Brand and Know Your Audience

Considering that the existing social media sites usually require written and multimedia components as profiles, one will, therefore, need to determine the personal brand to use before starting the process of building profiles. One should start by determining his or her strengths, for instance, what one is passionate about when in the workplace, and the conversations you would want to engage in. Figure out how other people usually describe you and how you may want them to perceive you. Being authentic and true to yourself, in this case, will be very crucial in portraying the needed leadership to the rest of the workers. One is also needed to determine his or her personal brand statement, for instance, personal interests and work experiences. After conducting the personal assessment and witting all the information down, then one can now choose the social media site that your branding strategy effectively fits.

Monitor and Engage Your Audience

To ensure that you attain the best leadership from social media one needs to continually engage his or her audience . for instance the army leaders should respond to the asked questions, they should also question their junior staff and support the rest of the junior staff, for instance through taking part in their discussions, and liking their comments. Maintaining Constant communication and interaction with the employees act as a clear indication that as a leader, you are concerned about the well-being of the rest of the workers, thus enabling the employees to have trust in your leadership. On the other hand, as a leader, one also needs to monitor his or her reputation, for instance, through monitoring how the other employees are talking about you in the media sites. One should use the monitoring tools such as Google alerts to find the negative messages that should be stooped from spreading to avoid harming your reputation. Monitoring your reputation tends to be an opportunity to learn how well your leadership is being appreciated and also helps you to improve your mistakes.

Conclusion

Social media has become a key tool in attaining good leadership across the united states. Currently, Leaders are not using social media as a leisure tool instead they using it as part of their daily work since it helps them to remain connected to their specific areas of work, and also enable them to learn and share ideas with their employees. Various organizations leaders tend to have the ability to leverage either one or all social media sites to portray a positive leadership image to the rest of the workers. However, they have to be constantly involved to ensure they get the maximum benefits or results from social media interactions. There are various ways of leveraging social media as a leadership tool; this includes, first, determine your personal brand and know your audience. Secondly, selecting the right social media tools. Thirdly Monitoring and engaging your audience To attain the best leadership using social media one needs to continually engage his or her audience for example through responding to the asked questions asked, questioning their junior staff and support the rest of the junior staff. Fourth, conduct a situational analysis. To leverage social media as a leadership tool, one must first be aware of his or her current stand.

References

Hoppe, B., & Reinelt, C. (2010). Social network analysis and the evaluation of leadership networks. The Leadership Quarterly, 21(4), 600-619. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/messages/downloadsexceeded.html

Li, C. (2010). Open leadership: how social technology can transform the way you lead. John Wiley & Sons. Retrieved from http://www.danpontefract.com/images/ol_intro.pdf

Mayfield, A. (2008). What is social media. Retrieved from http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/jfq/mayfield_strat_for_soc_media.pdf