LinkedIn For CIOs: Getting It Right

LinkedIn has become an integral part in the life of an enterprise CIO. At office, home, while travelling, it’s always making its presence felt. Talking of presence - LinkedIn is used by more than 161 million professionals across the world and more than 15 million in India.

The usual features apart, the app space is also picking up and gathering steam among the CIO community. Thereby, creating greater stickiness to this business networking platform among this group. But, given the versatility and the options the site offers, it’s easier to get lost into a space that would look quite luring but less productive.

Setting the Objective

The key, therefore, is to set the objectives right to make business sense of business networking. The first step towards this would be identifying the objective itself for using LinkedIn. This is more about setting a purpose than typing in random thoughts as LinkedIn posts, which are found quite regularly on the site.

This objective may vary for the different CIOs, depending on their interest, nuances of job profile, company’s goals - ranging from connecting with ex-colleagues and common interest groups, getting access to expert groups to find answers to business issues, to finding tips from case studies and experiences shared by others and reaching out to prospective customers, vendors, partners, etc.
What CIOs are up to on LinkedIn

Here are some instances of how various CIOs are aligning LinkedIn to their business objectives as well as driving personal and professional productivity through this business networking platform.

Arun Gupta, Group Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Shoppers Stop, has been on LinkedIn for over five years and often uses the platform to stay connected with his professional and personal community. For him, it’s a tool of permanent connection because one can be in touch in spite of change in email addresses. “Trip updates via TripIt have helped me connect with my contacts in the cities where I visit. For instance, my last trip to US helped me connect with ex-colleagues who I had not met for over 15 years,” he explains.

According to Gupta, the ‘Company Pages’ is a good feature that he updates on a regular basis for Shoppers Stop. “The page also gives me a view on the other employees of the company,” he cites.

This view is also subscribed by Hari V Krishnan, Country Manager, LinkedIn India when he says, “The Products and Services tab provides rich, credible insights on a company’s offerings and allows you to engage with experts from the industry.”

Umesh Jain, CIO, Yes Bank feels that LinkedIn is already being used for recruitment and it’s a no-brainer, but the quality of hiring can be taken to the next level. “Common connections of the candidates shortlisted can provide inputs on how suitable the candidate would be for your organisation. CIOs can call the concerned connections about their work experience with the candidates with a clearer comparative analysis,” suggests Jain.

It can also come in handy to check profiles of somebody whom one is meeting for the first time. “With the market now flooded with mobiles with inbuilt social networking applications it’s even possible to do a quick last minute profile check of the person,” says Jain. This usually helps in breaking the ice. This is concurred by Krishnan, “Never enter a business meeting without doing a quick LinkedIn profile look-up of your counterpart. You can even do it on your mobile as you travel to the meeting,” he suggests.

LinkedIn can also be used as a reference tool. “A friend of mine heading a security organisation wanted to expand operations in Australia. Luckily my son is pursuing his MS in the same country with a specialisation in security. He connected my friend to the concerned people and now he is better positioned to win some clients,” informs Subramanian Manikkam, AGM - IT, Henkel CAC.

Manikkam has also been able to communicate with his connections in the network that are already hooked on to one of the Cloud models. “I wanted to have a dialogue with my peers about their experience on adopting the cloud and LinkedIn has been quite resourceful,” he says.

Being interactive holds the key

All of these instances cited by the CIOs have a purpose and are contextual enough to start a dialogue, which is an important characteristic for making the communication more engaging. And, this brings us to another important aspect to help unleash the productivity of a business networking tool like LinkedIn.

But, every post expecting an answer does not get commented, and this can be disheartening as people desire an honest opinion on what do the peers think about what they think. Conversations should be bilateral, and therein lies the core to successful communication. However, that is easier said than done.

Now for all of those who think they are better off posting their own thoughts and don’t expect a response, this is what Krishnan has to say, “When Southwest Airlines CEO, Gary Kelly posted a question to LinkedIn users, over 100,000 visitors came to participate in the subsequent discussion. Some of these users even confessed they were customers of his competitors. How much would you pay for such meaningful engagement with your competitor’s customers, leave alone your own?”

Gupta’s LinkedIn posts are highly commented on and have been well received by the CIO community. Here’s his take on the secret on how to script posts to increase the probability of being commented upon. “Posts that have contextual relevance or raise a question that triggers thought will always invoke a comment. Generic updates rarely get commented on. It is also a function of how often the update is made by the person,” explains Gupta.

People have varying likes and dislikes, which often determine the feedback to your posts. However, the connections over a period of time establish a reputation and the rate of interactivity will also depend on that. According to Jain, the strategy to connect has to be simple. He feels that if a CIO has a blog or a thought leadership platform, he should initially promote it to his connections. This will drive initial consumption but beyond a certain in time it will be solely driven by the quality of thoughts.

There are certain users who write junk on the site but still the posts are highly commented due to their viral marketing policy, but in the course of time get dumped by the users. Remember that small ‘Hide’ button on the right. So, Happy posting.