Urbanology: Reasons Social Networking Should Be An Executive Priority.

Picture courtesy of Mashable – article “5 Habits of Successful Executives on Twitter”

Forrester Research reports advertisers will spend $716 million on social media marketing (including ads on social networks, not to mention devoting resources to their own blogs), but that will grow by 34 percent to top $3.1 billion in 2014. (This correlates with Forbes survey which found that senior level marketing execs planned to spend more on viral and social media campaigns over the next six months). Clearly, those corporate executives which haven’t already done so, will be moving rather quickly to integrate social media as a vital part of their overall marketing plan.

The internet is the primary news source for people born after 1987 (around 24 yrs. old). Yet, the average Tweeter is 39, Facebooker is 38 and LinkedIn user is 44 – all with social media narrowing the gap between internet and mainstream communication. In the recent past (around this time last summer) many corporate executives were collectively dismissing social networking sites with the exception of Linkedin. Of course, there were early adopters of social media, ahead of the social networking curve, whom typically fell into technology, sustainability or startup business executive categories. Executweets is a platform that aggregates the tweets of top business execs and IT pros delivering a summary of the most insightful business tweets. For the most part, C-level executives have done a lackadaisical job at posting, participating and engaging in social networking sites.

Forbes Insights, research shows a rapid increase with Executives under 40, being the most willing to engage with emerging Internet technologies such as blogs, wikis, Twitter, mobile computing, and online social networks. According to the report, 58% of executives under 40 maintained a work-related blog daily (35%) or several times a week (21%). According to the report that figure drops to 35% among those 40-49 followed by a precipitous drop to only 5% for executives over 50.

CEO’s, CMO’s and COO’s have big jobs, increasing responsibility and during the time when social media began to surge, the economy caused an even greater strain on the corner office. Excuses ranged from the proverbial Waste of Time, Lack of Content Control to Security Concerns, all valid issues.

Social Networking Benefits for the Corner Office:

1) Monitor Industry News, Consumer Discussion and Business Sentiment: Regarding customer service, a non-favorable Tweet from a high profile user with a few thousand followers could be detrimental to your business. Tracking Twitter conversations should be built into your company’s strategy. In addition to minimizing a ‘groundswell’ of negative (word of mouth) tweets and re-tweets regarding your business. Twitter can be used to gather productive feedback, in a way that can assist in improving the quality of your product or customer service. Opinion Research for the Chubb Group of Insurance Cos. found that 20% of respondents had used social media to share a negative experience with a brand or service.

2) Instant Research, Insights and Focus Groups: Research companies may or may not like this suggestion, but if you have a ‘notion’ of what your research should look like and consumer insights deliver opposing results, use your Twitter audience for research insights. It won’t replace traditional research but you may find an undiscovered area or consumer insight worth digging into a little deeper. Quickly grab consumer sentiment, feedback and polling by asking your Twitter network.

The hashtag (#tag) immediately following your topic, is an excellent way to track trends or open your question to a community already discussing the topic. The hashtag, collects Twitter’s community-driven subjects compiling context and metadata to your tweets. The contexts could be events, disasters, headlines, topics etc… #tag opens the discussion to the entire Twitter community.

Like most websites, Twitter offers the standard search which will deliver real time results using your preferred keyword or phase. Perfect for discovering subjects beyond your personal Twitter timeline. Additionally, A great place to track conversations regarding your company, key personnel and industry news using the search.twitter.com tool.

Here’s a real-time example of the difference between ‘hashtags’ and ’search’ uses. I’m not a regular soccer watcher but quickly jumped on the World Cup bandwagon. Like many others, I was wondering what the incredibly annoying humming sound, lurking in the background of the U.S. vs. England match. I tweeted the question to my followers. Then searched the phrase “World Cup” looking for an answer. After running a Twitter search, I found that the official hashtag was #wc2010, simultaneously one of my followers sent back the World Cup Twitter Trends chart featured on Mashable. At which point, I found out that the noise was coming from a vuvuzela, sometimes called a “lepatata” or stadium horn commonly blown by football fans at matches in South Africa. It emits a very loud monotone sound (like an elephant or foghorn). More importantly, I wasn’t the only who was annoyed.

3) Partnership Networking: Connect with industry competition, vendors and consumer groups. Great place for CEO’s to connect with both global and local communities. CEO’s can build global presence through reaching out to different areas of the world, testing market sentiment and perhaps demand. Likewise, CEO’s have been known to tweet meetups inviting network followers local coffee houses, conduct ‘question and answer’ sessions, and invite followers to conferences and public speaking engagements.

4) Consumer Connections: Win new customers, incorporate customer feedback, improve customer service, re-purpose compliments, educate buyers, boost word-of-mouth, decrease confusion – the consumer connectivity benefits are endless but do change they way companies traditionally communicate with consumers. Social Media is a two way street with ‘listening’ being the new and most important element. No longer are companies spoon-feeding consumers brand-centric messages. Its now consumer-centric, customer service-driven exchange that determines loyalty.

5) Brand Building: Who better to communicate company culture, brand and personality, than the CEO or CMO? “Twitter isn’t advertising, it’s a conversation.” CEOs should engage and ignite conversation, sharing things about their company’s corporate culture, their own leadership values, and the team of people who make the company great. “Each tweet should be a window into the life of the company behind the marketing, which will make the marketing stronger as a result.” With the efficiency of Twitter’s 140 characters or less, time should not be an excuse. Additionally, C-Level Executives have the authority to release ground-breaking company information to the public.

Humanizing your communications is key, there are some who don’t like mixing personal conversation with business news on Twitter and others that believe, to some element that it contributes to human side of a business or CEO. Either way, connect with your followers without sounding like a salesman or automated-reply. If you don’t, it could damage your reputation and company brand. In short, be appropriate to the platform, social networking is after-all a social exercise. Other ways to engage, customers is through tweeting a summary or link to your blog or website, which usually results in an increase in network followers and fans.

Deep communication and ties to “Followers” has led to some very interesting Tweets from the C-suite:

Jonathan Schwartz, the last chief executive of Sun Microsystems, was the first Fortune 200 boss to tweet his resignation. Mr. Schwartz has been fond of using the Internet as a soapbox. At Sun, he became the first chief executive of a major company to put up his own blog. He also pushed the Securities and Exchange Commission to put blogs on equal footing with press releases and filings when it comes to disclosing critical business matters to investors.

Mr. Schwartz used Twitter to publish a haiku about his exit from Oracle, which was purchased by Sun in tweeting,“Financial crisis, Stalled too many customers, CEO no more,” Mr. Schwartz wrote.

My Favorite C-suite Tweeps, their Twitter Uses and Followers:

@Ted, my most favorite and valued resource on the entire internet. Uses Twitter to spread riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world.

@mashable, Pete Cashmore, CEO of Mashable has over 2 Million followers, topping the Twitter “Most Popular CEO” list. Pete is a Social Media “Rockstar” using Twitter to has a companion to promote his company blog that features technology tips, news, and trends. He’s cutting-edge, often the first to break a story – The TMZ of Technology.

@TimOReilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media has a massive following, with over 1,400,000 followers, uses Twitter to follow leading technology wizards – those people who are on the cutting edge of technology. His company then tries to deliver the technology.

@zappos, Tony Hsieh of Zappos.com, may be the most popular CEO with 1,700,000 followers. He uses Twitter to give customers an insight into his company’s personality and culture.

@jnovogratz, Jacqueline Novogratz has 320,000 followers, CEO of Acumen Fund, a non-profit organization with a goal to demolish global poverty. She uses Twitter to connect with like-minded individuals, in a sort of think-tank manner looking for innovative solutions to end the world’s poverty crisis.

@mediatrustpete, Peter Bordes, CEO of MediaTrust has over 7000 followers, he uses Twitter to engage internal partners, employees and MediaTrust community.

@guykawasaki, Guy Kawasaki, Alltop CEO has over 240, 000 followers. He is most noted for being one of the Apple employees responsible for the original Macintosh in 1984. Now He is extremely socially active with one of the most sophisticated networking structures (outside of Mashable) on the entire internet. He has an eclectic and eccentric taste, broadcasting everything from unique architecture to weird stories and countdown lists. He uses Twitter for personal branding and promotion.

@BillGates, Unexpected late comer Bill Gates, Microsoft, just opened a Twitter account in January of 2010. In less than two weeks he had more than 400,000 followers. Currently he has over 1 Million Followers and only following 58 people

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