Most businesses now know that social media is global, open, transparent, non-hierarchical, interactive and real time. It is changing customer behaviour and expectations that people have in the workplace.

Leading organisations are creating coherent social media strategies to support their business goals. However anecdotal evidence suggests that senior executives are taking longer to work out what social media means for them personally. Those that are using social media are not always using it strategically.

There is a compelling case for senior executives to engage with social media. It is an opportunity to build your personal profile; communicate about yourself both within and outside your company. It will enable you to engage quickly with your peers, employees, customers and the broader public and younger people. It will also give you the opportunity to learn from direct feedback.

However which platforms do you select? What do you communicate about? What resources can you commit? How do you sustain your commitment? How do you manage the risks? And how do you measure the progress?

These issues are going to be discussed frankly at the next session of The Social Media Leadership Forum by a panel which includes senior communications representatives from Unilever, Virgin Media and Shell.

This is an excellent opportunity to meet with your peers to share insights into how social media can be used as a personal branding tool by senior executives, and how it can be leveraged to promote products, company issues and specific causes. We are at a turning point in how business communicates, and this event will not happen again.

The Social Media Leadership Forum was created and is managed by ItsOpen. Membership is restricted to leading organisations so they can meet in private with their peers and share ideas and experiences to build their own intelligence and knowledge which can then be leveraged across the business for greater success. The Social Media Leadership Forum is based on the concept of collaborative intelligence.

If you represent a leading organisation and would like to join with your peers in The Social Media Leadership Forum to participate in this session and others, please drop me a mail at: and I will be happy to share with you more details about how you can participate.