CEO's Who Twitter

Interesting story today in BusinessWeek on heads of companies and their take on Twitter. Given the amount of information overload and the pressure on CEO's to be efficient with time, use of Twitter makes a lot of sense given its 140 character limit and ability to give/ get instant feedback.

My favorite CEO to follow onTwitter is hands-down Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com if you haven't seen his Beginners Quick Start Guide and Tutorial to Using Twitter its worth a read. I also love the Tweets of Tara Hunt of Citizen Agency and Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst at Forrester Research.

Benefits to CEO's to use Twitter:

- Feed reader: I monitor Twitter several times/ day to see whats happening. I know many people who no longer read news sites and gain most of their daily information from Twitter alone!

- Brand Building: abilty to communicate your company culture, brand and personality. Ability to raise visibility of the CEO and your brand.

- Focus Group: quickly reach people with news or questions - get instant feedback - 24 hrs/ day open feedback without filters. I frequently put questions out to my Twitter network and am always amazed at the generous response I get on everything from requests for stats to opinions on issues.

- Networking Tool: connect directly with others in a effective way. I have personally connected with journalists and executives on Twitter that way that would have been difficult to do otherwise. I frequently see CEO's Twittering about where they are and inviting people to join them for coffee or discussion.

- Monitoring: spot trending or buzz around a topic or technology - FAST! If I want to know where the buzz is on a specific topic, I usually turn to Twitter first. Many social analytics tools now include Twitter in their monitoring of conversations.

- Drive traffic: to your website - Twitter community is ACTIVE! Post a popular post on Twitter with a link to your website and you will see a huge spike in traffic and usually an increase in your network of followers.

- Humanizing your communications: there are some who don't like mixing the personal chatter with business on Twitter - while others believe that some element of this contributes to us seeing the human side of a business or CEO.

Over the past year I have been following the number of large enterprises and media companies that are using Twitter in their communications as well as advising several of Crimson's clients in their use of Twitter as an effective social media marketing tool.  I hope to see more CEO's embracing Twitter and I personally welcome more of the human element as I find the most compelling posts from CEO's to be those that expose their everyday activities as people. 

You can find me on Twitter: bondjanebond

Comments

[jbp]

Fore sure, Twitter fits well for CEO's (microformat) but BW's article is about 19 CEO's, all involved in the Internet sector... we have to wait a litlle more to see non techs CEOs use this kind of communication tool.

[Karen OBrien]

Great point! There are a lot of non-tech companies getting on board and using Twitter effectively - Whole Foods and Starbucks spring to mind... but very few large company CEO's that aren't in high-tech.

[Jared O'Toole]

Hey Karen, came across your blog on Twitter!

I think its crucial that companies get involved with things like Twitter. There really is nothing like it in terms of getting news fast. I monitor it all day to see what's going on and if something gets hot I then go read about it somewhere else in depth.

Companies really have to learn how to take advantage of tools like this if they are to move at the speeds we all expect them to.

Jared
@jotoole4

[Curt V]

As an exec with a digital marketing agency (level-studios.com), I find it a tough line to straddle between agency news/brand/insight and personal information. I value my own privacy as an individual, but I guess by default I am giving that up using twitter (less than 30 days now)to try and tell a story relevant to our agency. Open to any ideas!

[Brett Farmiloe (Jobing.com)]

I've compiled a list of the top 15 CEO's to follow on twitter...here's the link: http://jobpal.com/hfi6

[Karen OBrien]

Thanks Brett - nice list! Not sure if you have seen this new initiative between Twitter and Federated Media? Aggregating executive tweets http://www.exectweets.com/

[Mark Palmer]

Great post. I'm a "CEO who twitters" (@mrkwpalmer, CEO of StreamBase Systems in Lexington, MA). I think there are some other benefits, from my perspective, of Twitter.

Employee communication: Lots of the people in my company read me on Twitter. It gives them a sense for where I am and what I'm doing. Especially, for example, our engineers, who don't see me everyday because I'm with investors, in the field, or with analysts, etc.

Recruiting: Twitter's a great way for people to get to know me personally, and therefore to get to know the culture of the company. If they're attracted to that personality, they'll be attracted to my firm, and that's good for us!

PR: You called it "networking," but I'm heavily involved in PR, and I think these are discreet values. I've already had reporters, for example, from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal contact me for comment based on something I wrote (actually those 2 interviews were from blog posts, but it's starting to happen with other pubs via Twitter)

Competitive Intelligence: I can monitor my competitors and what they are saying publicly. NOTE: this is a double-edged sword, they can hear what we're saying as well!

Thought Leadership: In my area, which is a new software category, there's still a lot of education of the market to be done. Twitter helps me do that.

Blatant Marketing: I'm not a big of this use (as the CEO, I don't do it, but our VP of Marketing does), but I do follow a few firms because I WANT to tune into their marketing communications.

No doubt - Twitter is a powerful tool for many reasons, if used intelligently.

Thanks for this nice article, well done.

- Mark Palmer, CEO, StreamBase
@mrkwpalmer

[Karen OBrien]

Hi Mark - I love your comments here - you make a lot of important points that highlight the use of Twitter and why so many CEOs are finding value in it.

Have you seen http://www.exectweets.com/ any thoughts on it?

Karen O'Brien
Twitter: bondjanebond

[Michael Procopio]

Hi Karen,

I was asked about Executive Comms and social media. Your article came in handy for the Twitter part. My write-up referencing your post is at http://mprocopio.com/blogs - "Executive Communications and Social Media"

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