Social Media: What Every Senior Leader Must Know

Social media aren't just coming - they're here. And senior leaders need to understand how to maximize Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other popular sites, as well as how to protect their organizations from very real security risks.

In an exclusive interview, Prof. Sree Sreenivasan, Dean of Student Affairs at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, discusses:

• What's most misunderstood about social media;
• How organizations can benefit most;
• Ways senior leaders can improve their own professional lives.

Sreenivasan is a technology expert and dean of student affairs at the Journalism School, where he teaches in the digital journalism program. He specializes in explaining technology to consumers/readers/viewers/users. For more than eight years, he served as technology reporter for WABC-TV and WNBC-TV in NYC and now occasionally appears on various TV shows to talk tech. For more than six years, he wrote a Web Tips column for Poynter.org. He has written articles for The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Rolling Stone, National Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, and Popular Science. In March 2004, Newsweek magazine named him one of the nation's 20 most influential South Asians; and in 2009, AdAge named him "one of 25 media people to follow on Twitter." You can find him on Twitter and his Twitter Guide for Newbies and Skeptics.

TOM FIELD: What do senior leaders need to know about social media today? Hi, this is Tom Field, Editorial Director with Information Security Media Group. We are discussing this topic today with Professor Sree Sreenivasan, Dean of Student Affairs at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Sree, thanks so much for joining me today.

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SREE SREENIVASAN: Pleasure to be here.

FIELD: Just for a bit of context, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your current work?

SREENIVASAN: Yes, I've been teaching journalism at Columbia Graduate School in Manhattan for 17 years, and the vast majority of them have been spent in the digital media program. In the last couple of years, I've been teaching social media for media professionals, and I do training around the country on how to use technology better. I've also been our technology reporter on the local NBC and ABC stations, and I occasionally freelance or do guest appearances about technology and explaining it to everyday people for several years on TV around the country.

FIELD: Very good. Well, as you know, we reach security executives and banking institutions, government agencies, healthcare organizations, and we hear a lot of senior leaders saying today that social media are coming. Now the reality is ... and that is where I am going to ask you to fill in the blank.

SREENIVASAN: The reality is that social media is here all ready, but the reality is also that it is over hyped at the same time. So I'm saying kind of two things. I believe that social media is the biggest change to happen in the world of the internet since the web itself, because it changes the way people are communicating, telling each other what is happening in the world, how people are finding out what is happening, immense customer service implications. The way in which people are doing business has been affected, as well as personal connections. So we think of social media sometimes as something that the kids do, but I spend a lot of time talking to senior leaders that they need to understand this.

FIELD: Well, that gives me a good entry here; what do you find that senior leaders most misunderstand about social media?