Why CEOs need social media – Deloitte CEO’s story

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Updated on July 8th, 2013

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Who said CEOs don’t use social media…?

Certainly not Giam Swiegers. And you don’t get much higher up the corporate ladder than CEO of Deloitte Australia.

In this 3 minute interview, Giam Swiegers shares his passion for social media, how they embrace it as Deloitte and why future leaders absolutely need it!

Here’s what I discovered.

What is a Digital Native?

A Digital Native is a term coined by a Stanford professor in 2001. A digital native is considered anyone born after technology was invented. That is anybody younger than 34. In our case that makes up 75% of the people who work here.

A Digital Dinosaur is someone post that point, who is ignoring technology and ignoring how digital communication is impacting.

A Digital Immigrant is anyone over 34 years old who is willing to learn and join the digital revolution in communication.

How do you use social media at Deloitte?

We’ve had a lot of Digital Natives volunteer to mentor Digital Dinosaurs to turn them into Digital Immigrants. As this program is going on I see more and more Digital Immigrants joining the social media revolution here!

Are they enjoying it?

I think some might be enjoying it more than others. There’s some very interesting banter going on on our internal Yammer site where the discussion is raging on about how Digital Immigrants are starting to accept their mentoring by very young people!

Is social media a key for being a leader in the future?

Absolutely. I reckon that social media and digital communication is going to be vital. When we talk to our partners, we say that if you’re under the age of 45 and very ambitious to lead, if you don’t get social media you are most unlikely to be an effective leader moving forward.

If you look at the role of leaders and of CEOs, our job is to get the strategy executed. You only have a chance of getting your strategy executed if you can communicate it. Communicated people must hear it and if you want them to hear it, you must do it in a way that they prefer to hear it. If you do in your way, that’s an interesting approach but not very effective.

Do you personally use social media?

We use Yammer which is somewhere between facebook and twitter – but for Deloitte Australia employees only. And I think Yammer has become a very effective communication tool to communicate with about half our people.

I’m on facebook just to see how it works but it connected me with all sorts of interesting friends and mates from a long time back.

I twitter but I’m not sure if I’m that good at it. And whatever else I can see around social media. LinkedIn, yep.

And where can people go to find out more?

We have a website Deloitte.com.au or nowdays if you google us there’s all sorts of interesting things that pop up.

*****
Thank Giam! You can follow @GiamSwiegers and Deloitte Australia @GreenDot.

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Adam Franklin is the bestselling author of Web Marketing That Works. He is an international social media speaker and CEO of Bluewire Media. His blog was Australia’s #1 Business Blog and his podcast was #9 on the top marketing podcasts in Entrepreneur magazine. His work has featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, Huffington Post and iTunes. Download the popular Web Strategy Planning Template which has been used by hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide. His weekly ‘Bluewire News’ email goes out to over 32,000 readers.