Not lost, just undiscovered.

As part of my Online Public Relations class, I have to write regular blog posts (for marks) in our online community. I plan to cross-post my favourite ones here and this is the first one.

Last Friday, the Globe and Mail published an article by Tavia Grant entitled “Tweets from the top: It pays to be in on the talk.” The article discusses the current trend of North American executives turning to Twitter in order to put a human face on their corporate brands.

In the article, Grant profiles CEO of ING Direct Canada Peter Aceto, who “is busy – but not so busy that he can’t find time to share bits of his life through Twitter.”

According to the article, “few Canadian CEOs have embraced the new tool like Mr. Aceto, whose daily updates range from the philosophical (“great leaders…seek out those with differing viewpoints”) to the personal (“parent teacher interviews tonite. found out my kids are not abnormal”) to the downright funny (“dressed like a banker today – yuk”).”

CEOs are supposed to be really busy people, maybe too busy to type 140 character messages all day about anything and everything. I mean, they usually work 11 to 13 hour workdays. But, apparently many CEOs think that taking that time is worth it. ExecTweets, which posts updates from top business executives on Twitter, features about 100 Tweet-happy executives. A similar website called Twitter Leaders, lists more than 300 of them.

Why do CEOs use Twitter then?

The experts featured in Grant’s article list the following reasons for CEOs to tweet:

• To build trust
• To promote values of openness and transparency
• To market the company and products (although not too strongly or frequently)
• To build communities
• To share ideas
• To get customer and client feedback
• And, ultimately, to put a human face on a large corporation

All of these aspects can help attract buyers and customers, all which are great for your business. And for your own brand. The article states that Aceto, as a result of his constant broadcasts, has been asked to speak at public engagements about his twittering.

Does it make sense?

It sounds like a good initiative. Getting your CEO to tweet is an easy and somewhat inexpensive way to make the company seem light-hearted, less rigid and made of ordinary people just like you and me. It allows customers and clients to connect to you or your company on a personal level – it brings down the traditional wall between the little customer and the corporate giant. Now, if I’m a super fan of Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson, I can follow him and get to know what crazy things he’s doing each day, read what articles he thinks are interesting, and maybe I’ll start to understand how I can be as successful as he is (this is all hypothetical, of course).

But at the same time, there are risks. For example, it only takes one biased, negative or flaming tweet to bring down a CEO’s credibility and perhaps the company.

There’s also a fine line between sharing what’s going on in your day and looking like you don’t do anything at all. If I’m expecting you to take care of my project but you’re busy tweeting about being at the beach, then I’m not impressed.

Do you think it’s a good thing for CEOs to be on Twitter? What risks are there?

Picture credit: arincrumley

Yesterday, in our Media Relations class, we talked briefly about Twitter and its impact on PR.

I’m not an expert on Twitter yet, but from reading various blog posts and talking to enthusiastic users, I am learning how Twitter allows people to build relationships, share information and interact in real time.

I mentioned to the class that on the night of the US Presidential Election, I followed the election.twitter stream.  I was in awe as I watched hundreds of people tweet their immediate reactions to Obama’s win and it really hit me then that this was a moment I would never forget.  That’s when I started to realize that there was something special about Twitter.

Yesterday, there were two great examples of the power of Twitter:

U.S. Airways flight 1549 crashes into the Hudson River

We were in our Media Relations class and our professor, Barry Waite, was showing us examples of media relations in the news.  When he opened the CBC page, we saw that there had been a plane crash in the Hudson.  He then opened Twitter and asked his followers to say hi to our class.  A few minutes later, someone responded with a link to a story on how Twitter broke the first photo of the plane crash: http://ad.vu/2hrc. The class was amazed.

Toronto’s West End Blackout

I was at home working on the computer when all of a sudden my Tweetdeck (which I had installed only a few hours earlier) started making a lot of noise. I didn’t have the TV on or the radio, and so it was through Twitter that I learned that part of the city was without power.  Quickly I picked up that people were using the #darkTO hashtag for the conversation and I began to follow it myself. People were posting TTC service updates, Toronto Hydro updates, phone numbers for help, and even supportive messages.  An hour after it began, CBC posted this story: Twitter Shines in TO Blackout

What both of these examples showcase is the power to reach a group of people and share information instantaneously using Twitter.  Media outlets were watching streams on both events and not only were they adding information, they were also using information from other tweeters to build their own news stories.

Here’s another story: A friend of mine ran to work in the morning because her apartment was freezing.  A few hours later, she tweeted to #darkTO and asked if her area has power yet or not.  She received a faster response (telling her no) by tweeting than if she had gone searching around the web for that answer.

Are there any other examples of how and why Twitter is so great? In what ways is it not?

Photo Credit: ComicBase – Creative Commons License (BY-NC-SA)