The Digital Leaders: Shirley Chowdhary – Director, Chair + Former CEO

Sometimes you meet people in your professional life who have a wholesome mix of integrity, curiosity, compassion and selflessness that just draws you in. Shirley Chowdhary is one of those people.

I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Shirley several years ago and we’ve since built a strong professional and personal partnership. What I’ve learned about Shirley in that time is she is always willing to use her profile and position of influence to remind aspiring leaders that you don’t need to be bulletproof or have all the answers – honesty and vulnerability are powerful leadership qualities.

Shirley’s online activities reinforce these leadership qualities, and that’s why I was so keen for her to share how she’s built her digital brand and the advice she has for other leaders.

Follow or connect with Shirley on LinkedIn or Twitter.

In my opinion, leaders need to be on social media because…

Things have changed. Social media is the primary way to access thought leadership, connect with people to broaden your network and to get access to thinking and ideas that expand your perspective. It is also the great equaliser. You can have a conversation on Twitter or LinkedIn with people you couldn’t imagine meeting whose social networks don’t cross with yours.

We need to force ourselves to go outside the networks we see every day, to read things that affront us and confuse us, to question our own thinking and ensure that our thought patterns and belief systems are being challenged. This is the best part of social media. I have met some great people and learnt so much – some of which I will adopt and some of which I don’t agree with. Social is an easy way to expose yourself to all of it.

When it came to my own digital brand, the turning point for me was…

I had gone onto social previously and made mistakes – confusing my brand, not having a strategy, connecting to anyone and everyone and taking part in conversations on any topic. I didn’t want to go back and make that mistake again, so for me it was about taking baby steps back and understanding that I could do it my way. There are no rules and no set way to interact with social. It’s all about deciding what works for you. I had seen people use social in ways that I didn’t want for myself but I learnt that I can do as little or as much as works for me. I want to be able to use my voice in a particular way and now I feel much more confident that I can do that.

My biggest barrier up to that point was…

I don’t think that anything I do is interesting enough that anyone needs to hear my opinions or see photos from me multiple times a day! I didn’t want to do that and didn’t want to tied to social media in that way. Roger showed me that I can use social in a way that works for me.

I’m currently using social media to…

Learn more about the areas that I am interested in. I am also keen to connect with and learn from people who are thought leaders in the topics that I am interested in and to start interesting conversations. Social media is all about giving power to the people and changing the centralised power models we are so used to. I love that social is the great equaliser and everyone can have a voice. It means that we have the opportunity to learn from people who may not have had a platform to share their ideas. That concept really resonates with me.

I work this into my day by… 

Allowing a few minutes a few times a week to make sure that my social media feeds are giving me the information I want to see. I curate my feed by looking at the hashtags and lists I am following, consider new connection requests and take a look at what is coming through my feed and what I don’t need to see. I spend this time on the mechanics rather than reading the feed. The aim is to allow for a more tailored curation of what I see when I am reading the feed. Roger, you taught me this!

The major benefits I’ve seen to date are…

The social media feeds are now more and more tailored to what I want to see and who I want to hear from! I never realised that I had so much control over what and who I see on social. I have always been unintentional with my social media – reading the feeds when in waiting rooms and on public transport or while watching TV in the evening. I used to waste time getting pulled into rabbit holes for hours for no purpose and then realising how much time I had wasted. Now when I am on social, I intentionally pay attention to posts (or not) and realise that everything I am doing (even how long I linger on a photo or post) sends a message to the algorithm on what I like and don’t like. If the algorithm is that clever, I want to make it work for me!

My advice for other leaders wanting to build their own digital brand is…

Think carefully about what you stand for and what you support. There is a danger that if the list is too long, your brand will be diluted, so be deliberate. Think hard about who you are and the topics that you are passionate about. Then think about how they are connected and whether there is an overarching theme.

Go through your connections and the topics and people you follow on each channel so that you can start to hone in on the topics and people that you’ve decided on. This is still a work in progress for me and it takes a long time. But a little each day or every few days will get you there. You will start seeing immediate changes in your feed so every little bit helps!

Think about how you use each social media channel and what it’s for. For example, I keep Instagram and Facebook just for friends and family. LinkedIn and Twitter are work related. Will you accept connection invites from work colleagues on your private channels? Start to define rules for yourself based on how you intend to use those feeds.

It may also help if you can decide which is your primary channel of choice. You can put the same posts out there on every channel but do you really want people following you to see the same posts multiple times? If you can learn a bit about the algorithms of each platform it will help you decide which ones you prioritise. For example, Twitter is great but it is fast moving and to keep up, you may need to post multiple times a day. LinkedIn may not require you to do that and may need a few posts a week. It’s about working out what works for you.

One opportunity or success social media has provided that I couldn’t have accessed otherwise is…

At the GO Foundation (my previous exec role) we launched a number of brand campaigns with videos. They weren’t about raising money but rather about advocating for the importance of Indigenous education. Working with Twitter, for a relatively small amount of money, we received huge traction for our messaging. Over 4.5 million people engaged with each campaign and we had almost a quarter of a million people watching each video. For a small organisation (that for one of those campaigns had one employee), that was phenomenal reach! It taught me that you can leverage social in a very cost-effective way. Another example of social being the great equaliser.

Someone who does a great job of managing their digital brand – who motivates and inspires me – is…

There are lots of people who do it well but I’m still searching for my social media zen master!