Is your CEO a brand champion online?

Customers want to feel that the custodians of the brands they use are in touch with them, that they hang out in the same places. And never has this been easier or more relevant than now with the platform that the Internet environment provides.

The CEO, the MD and other exco (executive committee) members should have an online profile in one form or another, depending on the company policy and the industry you fall within. By showing transparency and building these individuals' brands online, the company's reputation will benefit and the overall online presence will grow.

The recently announced winner of the Business Women's Association for the corporate category 2008, Mardia van der Walt-Korsten has done a great job at ensuring a strong online presence: she has a LinkedIn and Facebook profile, as well as many news articles and interviews on financial sites and technology blogs such at mydigitallife.

But the question always is: “How to do this?” Here are a few steps that can be taken that will make a huge difference:

Conduct some dipstick research to understand if and how they feature online

Search engines such as Google are often the first place that a person goes to, to find out about a company, its CEO, and products. Often not even searching for a specific brand but because someone has mentioned the CEO and the company in a blog posting or on a forum linked to an event or service related to a product and that happens to be the search phrase the person has used. So your company and CEO will come up... good or bad.

Go to Google, enter the relevant persons' name in and see how many results show up. Are the comments positive or negative and on which sites the postings were made? If there are no results for them, then this is also a huge problem.

Create a profile on a professional business networking site such as LinkedIn

This social networking site is one of the most professional and actively used sites. It is used by people from all levels within an organisation, to get references from colleagues and to provide recommendations on colleagues.
A profile of current portfolio, with a background on what the person has achieved and a picture, provides a place for journalists /bloggers/citizen journalists to get an overview of the person they are about to comment on. If they find them here, they may be less likely to be as harsh as they may be if they can't find any information on line about them.

Blogging

A blog is a perfect way to create content (which we all know is KING online and raises visibility on the search engines). This should, however, be carefully considered in terms of time available to write and respond to comments and what will the subject of the blog be about. Will it be a corporate blog - do you want to just share information about the company - or will it be a personal blog - is the CEO an authority on a certain subject that would then be blogged about?

There are many ways to create awareness without starting one's own blog. This can be done by actively responding and commenting on posts by bloggers that are relevant. You can also be a regular guest blogger on a site that is aligned or comments about the industry that the company operates within.

Turn the CEO into a real person

Just as the Sunday Times features a key business person, his or her family and hobbies, so this too should be done online.

A great way is through the individual sharing a hobby that he or she pursues by posting content on video-sharing sites (YouTube) and photo-sharing sites (Flickr), tagging the videos and images so that they appear under the person's name and specific interest when searched for on Google. A Facebook profile is another great way to do this.

This shows that the person is real, they have a high emotional intelligence and they have a life outside of the office. This way, one of the most fundamental business tools, networking, is engaged online and to millions of people.

Remember you need to monitor all activity implemented on an ongoing basis, measure the results and see what works and how to approach the next steps.