When a trusted journalist writes a positive story about your company, leadership team or product, she is ultimately giving her stamp of approval for all the world to read. That third-party validation is invaluable to businesses and can have a positive impact from marketing to sales, to recruiting, to culture. Yet, despite the power positive PR can have on almost every aspect of your business, many founders, CEOs and other business leaders aren’t using social media to further their reach and target their online coverage to those who should see it. (Hey, maybe you’re even one of them!)

The reasons why not are understandable — Tweeting is likely of lower priority than, say, raising a round of seed funding and other activities required to keep a business running. But from a long-term perspective, using your CEO’s social media presence to amplify media endorsements can have a lasting impact.

Here are five reasons why:

1. It looks good to those researching your company. You can bet that prospective customers, possible investors and potential hires are thoroughly combing your website and leadership team’s social media profiles. Earned media stands out as an impressive boost to your company’s reputation as third-party validation. If the New York Times trusts your leaders as experts, why shouldn’t the prospects?
   

2. It extends the reach and life of an article. With any piece of marketing content, value often correlates to the number of targeted eyeballs on the piece. The more quality content a CEO or founder shares, the more likely it is that members of his or her network will share as well - increasing the likelihood of reaching your target audience. Digital content also lives longer via social media. If an article is timely or breaking news, business leaders should look to share it once a day at different times to make sure it spreads evenly to all corners of his or her audience.
   

3. It legitimizes the content. When it comes to trusting media coverage, people place more weight on who is sharing an article on Facebook than who wrote it, according to recent research from Media Insight Project. If a trustworthy source (like Bill Gates), shares an article on Facebook, 51 percent will deem the content well-informed and trustworthy, versus 34 percent when a non-trustworthy source shares the same article. A CEO’s social share goes a long way towards increasing trust in a piece of media coverage.
   

4. It forges a connection with the journalist. News outlets are a business and journalists are held to KPIs and benchmarks just like employees at your company. The better a journalist’s content performs online, the better they look to supervisors and the rest of the newsroom. Diligent posting (and tagging of the journalist’s handle or profile, if possible) of the coverage goes a long way in strengthening the relationship.
   

5. It boosts your reputation as a thought leader. Editors looking for contributed content will often use social media to vet spokespeople. As you try to build thought leaders within your organization, if your leadership doesn’t have social media accounts that reflect thoughtful posting, that could raise a red flag. On the opposite end, profiles with regular posts to previous media coverage will communicate that not only does your CEO or founder know what he’s talking about, other media outlets think so, too.
   

Is your CEO or founder active on social media? We want to follow them! Tweet at us at let us know.