I have a love/hate relationship with senior executives engaging with social media. On one hand I think it's a wonderful thing and something that many executives should engage in. A new study by BRANDfog supports this point of view. They report that people are much more likely to trust a company whose CEO uses social media to communicate.
The majority of BRANDfog survey respondents (77%) are more likely or much more likely to buy from a company whose CEO uses social media to clearly define company values and leadership principles. And 94% said C-suite social media participation enhances a brand image.
Which is great, and perhaps not all that surprising given how social much of society now is. But with great trust comes great responsibility, and that brings me to my bugbear with executive use of social media. For you see so many executives are happy to put their name to being on social media without actually doing the social bit themselves.
This approach was typified by news a few years ago that Obama had joined Twitter (he joined Pinterest today btw), but that despite amassing millions of followers and posting thousands of tweets, he himself had never used the site. If people are putting their trust in you it's because they expect to be hearing from you, not from your PR team or your PA, but from you.
Abuse that trust at your peril.
Yes. and what you say matters too.
Take Micky Arison, CEO of Carnival. @mickyarison.
He tweets mostly about the Miami Heat (basketball team) of which he is an owner but when Costa Concordia runs aground and 34 people die (Carnival owns Costa cruises) there's nothing. Now we are back to basketball again.
Trust? uh, no.
Quite. It's no good just being there during the good times. People often need you most when things have gone wrong.
This will never happen. All the executives I've known are far too important (in their own mind) to actually talk to customers. They'd much rather be in meeting after meeting than actually deal with customers.