Should Your CEO Be On Twitter?

By: Jennifer McClellan and David Rosen, New York

The CEOs who moved first onto Twitter have been hailed for their commitment to transparency and ability to adapt to the modern media landscape. It started with people like Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos [2007] and Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Group [2007], with some big names in business recently joining. One hundred and forty characters at a time, these leaders have educated investors about their vision, inspired employees and personally proven their commitment to customers. But as we emerge from this early adopter phase, CEOs – and the communications leaders responsible for positioning them – need to think across three dimensions to bring these benefits to scale.

1. Strategy: The digital channel is but one of many forums that a CEO uses, along with town hall meetings, emails, earnings calls, in-person meetings, media relations, events, etc. Asking whether your CEO should tweet or blog is like asking whether s/he should do broadcast television. The answer is: it depends – what’s the strategy and what’s the goal? It’s best to use classic communications strategy, thinking through which message will resonate most in which medium.
2. Channel: Which community uses which network? While Twitter has become a mainstream tool, particularly among journalists and investors, it is not necessarily the network that employees, customers and partners prefer. Doing research to identify which targets use which networks will reveal both the networks that will be needed and the proportion in which they should be used. Later in the process, each network’s back-end analytics are applied to measure the degree to which the channel is achieving its goal.
3. Language and cultural nuance: Most CEOs using social networks communicate in just one language, likely omitting the majority of stakeholders out of the conversation. Real-time translation services should figure into any global online executive positioning program, as should local culture and customs of where your message will be communicated.

These new factors can at first appear overwhelming. Indeed, the more countries, languages, social networks and stakeholders there are, the exponentially more complex the upfront process becomes. That said, if approached one piece at a time, the puzzle can be assembled in short order. And given that the end result is both scalable and measurable, the returns will far outweigh the investment.