Why Should CEO’s Tweet

Check out Twitter’s value for customer service, business marketing, and connecting with your “millennial” employees. A recent survey found that many people trusted a company more if the chief executive officer actively engages with social media.

Here are a few reasons why every CEO should tweet:

You can connect personally with your employees.

If some of your employees want to connect with you via Twitter, this could be a compliment. Facebook doesn’t seem to have quite the right vibes, but connecting with them on Twitter and LinkedIn could make you appear less of an old fogey, and more approachable.

You can connect easily with the press.

If people in the media want to speak with you directly, Twitter is a great platform. It’s also a great place to compliment them on great a article (Don’t forget to add a link!). And it’s a handy place to air ideas for potential pieces that pertain to your business, who knows they might find their way into print! Being a regular tweeter, you can uncover what’s trending and move quickly if you have some input to the conversation.

You can monitor what matters most to you.

You can set up searches on Twitter to monitor your own business and those of your competitors. You also can use search and create lists to learn about anything that matters to you: science, politics, music, film, sports. Use tools such as TweetDeck to make tracking easy. Tweet on your smartphone and learn how to upload photos, too. (Be careful, of course!)

You can build and revive relationships.

It’s fun to interact with your favourite CEO, athlete, musician, or artist via Twitter. It’s also good to keep up to date on peoples thoughts at important times, such as during a business conference, or a semi final. Remember to retweet too; it’s a form of social currency that is valued by employees, colleagues, and friends. Being benevolent and linking often will reap rewards as well.

You can follow the goings-on of the world.

Twitter’s trending topics will bring culture, music, opinions, and people to your planet. It is of course great for entertainment, but you’ll be amazed at how often you’ll get the jump on trends, news and other snippets. This is where an audience can be found and the platform used to engage millions of fans and drive them to a viewing point.

Points to Ponder

A CEO being on Twitter is also more than being where the audience is, as the research highlights, it is about setting the tone for the company. It lets everybody know what they are thinking, and what’s going on with the company, as well as operating with opinion formers and journalists that follow them, it also works as a great communication tool for the staff.

Twitter can help redefine brand perception, allowing businesses to reach people who might not have considered themselves customers, encouraging them to come and take a look and engage.

Conversations will go on regardless of whether the CEO of an organisation wants to take part or not, but they will lose the opportunity to gain influence. C-suite executives who do engage in social media are using it to their competitive advantage, and message is that CEOs who ignore social media as a powerful communication channel do so at their peril.