Twitter Tips for CEOs

This video is an interview with Michael Gass, author of http://www.fuelingnewbusiness.com (A blog about ad agency new business) at the offices of McDougall Interactive.

A lot of brands are on social media using Twitter, but not many CEOs, and I think that’s a disadvantage and something that they really should rethink. Many CEOs could be the face of the company, and it’s just hard to socialize an entity. Social media’s all about people connecting with other people. And when CEOs look at Twitter from a new-business perspective, it would be good to keep in mind, maybe, this formula. I call it the “70-20-10 Formula.” I came up with it some years ago. That really helped me with the way I use Twitter.

70 percent of what I share in Twitter comes from my blog site, and I recommend having a central platform that you are creating traffic and interest to, because the shelf life of a tweet is just so short. But if you combine that together and you’re sharing that content, it will create a significant amount of traffic as you grow your Twitter audience.

And then 20 percent of what I share is from other sources and some engagement with others. And then, along with that, 10 percent of what I do is the personal touches. There’s so much automation out there now for Twitter that it’s very robotic and dry and not very personal, and it doesn’t get the end result that you would think.

When you combine that, though, with the personal touch, where they get to know a little bit more about you and your activities. I’m in Boston today. As soon as I landed at Logan Airport, I checked in via Foursquare that posted directly to my Twitter account and also posted a photo there at the terminal. It creates interest, and people follow along with what you’re doing and those activities.

By maintaining the formula, it helps me to have a more robust Twitter feed and helps me to connect with the audience. A lot of people think that if they’re engaging like that, it will just inundate their day. But just periodically checking in on Twitter allows me to respond as I need to and engage with a number of my followers, and then it also helps create that emotional connection back to the company or to the brand.