How to Be a World Leader Using Social Media

This presentation was made to a Leadership Conference in Darwin in 2010. It was a five minute lightning talk. In this case I was limited to five minutes and 20 slides. It’s short, it’s fast and it’s based on Obama Online – a Book Rapper issue derived from Rahah Harfoush’s book Yes We Can.

How to be a World Leader using Social Media – Transcript

Leading with social media…

Who’s on Twitter? Facebook? You Tube? Who doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

I thought If I wore a tie in Darwin’s hot weather, you might tweet about my tie.

Even my Dad is on social media these days, so it’s getting a bit bizarre for me.

The Social Media Benchmark

Who set the benchmark? Which person is the best person to demonstrate social media?

• A nobody?
• A carpenter?
• A politician?
• A movie star?

Barack Obama used social media to become a world leader.

What are you going to use social media for?

If he can become US President through a social media campaign, then the sky’s the limit, right?

Three keys we’re going to talk about today…

1. You need to spark action
2. You need to rap with your audience and
3. You need to add some content or add some value

1 Sparking Action

The first one we’re going to talk about is sparking action.

The key to Obama’s online campaign was not to have people online. It was to have them vote offline.

His whole social media campaign was to incite action in the real world. 

Key idea: it’s about action.

Where are we going?

Obama wanted to be US President and his vision for the future was about change.

How are we going to change America?

And to do that you need to start with a vision. And you need to align that to your cause. 

Your cause needs to strike the emotions, it needs to strike the heart and it needs to strike the soul. Unless you’re getting people inspired by your cause well, we’re just not interested.

‘Why are we doing this?’ becomes the thing we need to measure.

We need to measure our progress towards the goal and the activity we’re doing.

If we’re not measuring things, people are not going to be engaged, they’re not going to be energised and they’re not going to be focussed.

The raps…

Did they talk with us or did they talk at us? (Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott in the 2010 Australian Election). Or did they just talk?

I think they just talked. No wonder we couldn’t decide.

What are we talking about?

The first rap we want to talk about is ‘What are we talking about?’ We need to define the conversation.

What are we talking about? What are we not talking about?

• Are we talking about football? 
• Are we talking about politics?
• Are we talking about leadership?
• We’re not talking about the weather today.
• We’re talking about leadership.

We need to define the conversations.

Social media is social because it’s for everyone to join in.

You want to give everyone the opportunity to say something.

Put your hand up. This is your chance to say something.

That’s what moves the world forward.

Obama, as good as he was couldn’t win the election by himself. He only had one vote. What he needed to do was to invite all his friends and get new friends onboard to help him change the world.

If you want to change the world, sitting on the couch like The Simpsons watching TV is not going to do it.

It’s not going to change anything, is it?

You need to be making something.

It could be as simple as a tweet or it could be as big and grandiose as running an election.

When you watch TV it’s actually okay to sit there and watch and a number of people will do that.

But when you’ve got a video game… Who wants to watch a video game? No! We all want to play, don’t we?

The first thing you have to do is give people the tools to play. And, once you’ve given people the tools to play you need to help them use them to they can get the most out of it.

There’s no point in having a Ferrari if you don’t know how to drive it.

Once you’ve given people the tools and you’ve given them the help to get things done, then they can create something. And, what does a little kid want to do when they’ve created something? “Hey look what I did!”

You want to give people a chance to show off so they can share what they’re doing and show the world what they’ve created.

Here’s my final take on social media and leadership…

If you were a good parent, what would be the things that you’d be doing?

• You’d be sparking action.
• You’d want desirable action.
• You’d be training your kids to act in a proper way.
• You’d have them dialoguing in conversations. 
• You’d be talking with them and…
• You’d be making some really cool stuff together, wouldn’t you?

That’s what social media is about. Be a good parent.

That’s your role model for leading with social media.

If you want more have a look at Book Rapper, there’s a whole bunch of ebooks for you to look at and digest further.

That’s five minutes and… That’s a RAP!