What’s the common factor amongst these world famous CEOs – Richard Branson, Eric Schmidt, Evan Williams, Jonathan Schwartz, and Tim O’Reilly – they all use Twitter. Given Twitter’s phenomenal reach and astonishing success, it is hardly surprising that it is increasingly being used by who’s who in the corporate world.
So, why is there a mad rush amongst CEOs to join the Twitter bandwagon? After all, Twitter isn’t even a professional network. It’s an amalgamation of a micro-blogging service with a social network. Then why is it that every CEO can’t help being on Twitter?
Keep It Simple Stupid
Contrary to the belief that top bosses love management jargon, most CEOs prefer to keep things simple. Twitter is a classic example of providing real time information in a simplistic manner. So, you get access to news, developing stories, opinions, feedbacks and lots of other information about all walks of life – entertainment, sports, business, lifestyle etc. It is hard to imagine any other social media network coming close to Twitter in terms of the sheer depth and breadth of the content offered.
One quick glance at the tweets of your followers and you know what’s happening around you. What’s more, you don’t even need a computer to access Twitter – as long as you have a smartphone with an internet connection, you are all set.
CEOs are often on the move and it’s a popular saying that they spend half their lives in airports/ flights and the other half in board room meetings. And as you can guess, Twitter fits in well in both these halves.
Customer Feedback
Twitter is a great tool for CEOs to get in touch with their customers and solicit feedback about their products and services. It isn’t a formal medium and promotes open communication between the top management of an organization and its customers. CEOs can engage in dialogs with customers and incorporate their feedback in order to improve their offerings.
Twitter is increasingly being used by CEOs and companies in order to get early feedback from users about product soft launches and beta versions. Such feedback helps improve the product before it is actually sold in the market.
Office Communication
Many CEOs use it to promote informal communication amongst employees as well. It’s a great way to promote healthy grapevine and is often used in team building exercises as well. Some CEOs have gone to the extent of building dedicated lists for their staff in order to share company updates. Twitter is a great means of constant non-obtrusive communication.
Mix Business with pleasure
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Thankfully, the creators of Twitter kept this in mind and created a fantastic tool which can be used to mix business with pleasure. CEOs often have rigorous work schedules stretching up to 18-20 hours a day and there’s literally no time for pleasure/ catching up with friends and family.
Twitter provides them the flexibility of keeping in touch with business contacts and personal contacts at the same time. Twitter is not just about business, it is a great stress buster for CEOs.
Twitter is an integral part of daily lives of many CEOs. It is a multi-purpose tool which lets them improve their business, keep in touch with their loved ones and build powerful contacts with who’s who of the corporate world.
Are you in a senior management position and using Twitter as part of your daily routine? If so, what does Twitter mean to you? Kindly share your feedback by leaving a comment here.
I'd love to see a survey on the breadth of use of twitter by CEOs. Numbers, who / by who, for what…
I don´t use Twitter… I live in #Twitter 😉
Twitter is a huge application with a number of amazing uses that can be applied to business. Palo Alto has written a practical guide to how to safely allow twitter to be used in the workplace while still protecting the security of your business. The white paper http://bit.ly/9G1Z3A is really interesting and will allow you to understand that there is utility to Twitter and that it can be an excellent medium for business.
In the list that you wrote you might want to add some of these names. Other than Bill Gates, the following list is mostly of Top Indian CEOs
1. @BillGates
2. @Vineetnayar
3. @S_Sivakumar
4. @anandmahindra
Some other leaders, business or political i follow are mentioned here
http://twitter.com/futurescape/leaders-public-b…
On the nature of interaction, a point that you might want to consider is that it is an important way to get perspectives on a view point and perhaps engage with talented people who might want to understand the company a bit more and perhaps explore working in it.
Syamant, thanks for the expansion of the list. Let's keep it growing 😉
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Twitter allows laconic publication of news, facts, tips, insights or just fun updates on trips with links to great articles, blogs, photos, in an instant, wherever you are. DMs are a very effective tool to make a quick point to a friend.
Although I am not a CEO, I’ve been actively searching for employment, and twitter has opened up a few different avenues I would have otherwise missed!
There aren’t many Richard Bransons in this world. Few standard-issue CEOs are prepared to communicate with the Twitterverse in real time. From a risk communication standpoint, this is a very, very bad idea.
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