15 CEOs Using Twitter to Promote Their Business
Posted on 24 March 2010
This following guest article was written by Richard Hemby who regularly writes about and college related topics for Online College Guru, an online college degree guide.
In recent years, Twitter has grown from a place for teenagers to share what they just ate for lunch to a serious platform for businesses to connect with their customers and for the media to break stories. In late January of 2010, even Bill Gates (@BillGates) started “Twittering”, and in less than two weeks has more than 400,000 followers. Here are a few other CEO’s that you might look or the next time you are on Twitter.
@guykawasaki – Guy Kawasaki was one of the Apple employees responsible for the original Macintosh in 1984. Now he is the Alltop CEO. He is extremely active on Twitter and primarily uses it as a broadcasting tool to announce new Alltop sites. He currently has 211,577 followers.
@mashable – Pete Cashmore is the CEO of Mashable. With 1,954,389 followers, Pete is one of the most popular Twitter users. Pete uses Twitter to offer other users Twitter tips, Twitter news, and Twitter help. He also shares social media stories from around the web. Pete Cashmore views Twitter as an excellent companion to his company’s blog.
@gcolony – George Colony is the CEO of Forrester Research. His company provides market research mostly in the area of technology. George likes Twitter because it allows him to understand what his clients are thinking about the world of technology and his company. He also regularly tweets about his ideas and thoughts about the technological world. He currently has 6,575 followers.
@demandrichard – Richard Rosenblatt is the CEO of Demand Media. His company provides web content and SEO services to a wide variety of clients. Demand Media also owns eNom, one of the biggest domain registration companies in the world. With 6,642 followers, Richard uses Twitter to communicate with investors, users, colleagues, and clients in a real-time manner. He likes that Twitter feels much fresher and not as cold as email.
@DrBobParsons – Bob Parsons is the CEO and Founder of Go Daddy Group. When he’s not dreaming up effective Super Bowl advertising campaigns, Parsons is excited to connect with his 21,559 followers on Twitter. He says he really likes the subscription model of Twitter in which people sign up to follow you. In this way, he can be sure that whenever he sends out a message there are a lot of interested people on the other end.
@timyoung – Timothy Young is the CEO of Socialcast. On his Twitter profile, he proclaims that “Email is Dead”. Rather than email, Tim likes to use Twitter to engage in discussions with his customers. He also likes using Twitter to tune in to other conversations that people are having about his company, the social media industry, and market trends. Timothy Young currently has 2,101 followers on Twitter.
@jasonalba – Jason Alba is the CEO of JibberJobber. A fairly new company, JibberJobber is a career management platform that helps both individuals find jobs and business recruit employees. Alba likes to use Twitter to raise awareness for what exactly JibberJobber can do for them. Jason considers himself the personality of JibberJobber, and he loves that Twitter provides a place where he can put his personality on display like nowhere else. Jason Alba currently has 11,922 followers on Twitter.
@jnovogratz – Jacqueline Novogratz is the CEO of Acumen Fund. Acumen Fund is a non-profit organization whose goal is nothing less than the eradication of global poverty. Novogratz is also the author of a book, The Blue Sweater. Novogratz likes Twitter because it helps her to connect with like-minded individuals. She never knows who she might talk to that could offer an innovative solution to solving the world’s poverty crisis. She also likes to engage with readers of her book. She must have a lot of them, because she’s got 316,189 followers.
@lebrun – Marcel LeBrun is the CEO of Radian6. LeBrun likes to listen to his 11,865 followers to understand their needs. He says that a brand is now the sum of conversations about it.
@jayadelson – Jay Adelson is the CEO of Digg. For him, Twitter is a natural extension of Digg, which is all about sharing. He likes how he can use Twitter to personally let his 7,445 followers know what he “Diggs”.
@mediatrustpete – Peter Bordes is the CEO of MediaTrust. Bordes likes using Twitter to engage in conversations with his business partners, employees, and the MediaTrust community. He has 6,911 followers.
@zappos – Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos.com. With 1,686,481 followers, Hsieh is extremely popular on Twitter. Hsieh likes using Twitter to give customers an insight into his company’s personality and culture.
@timoreilly – Tim O’Reilly is the CEO of O’Reilly Media. Tim also has a massive following, with 1,434,381 followers. Tim thinks Twitter is a great way to keep his eye on the “alpha geeks” – those people who are on the cutting edge of technology. His company then tries to bring that technology to the masses.
@michaelhyatt – Michael Hyatt is the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. Hyatt has 73,020 followers. Most of them are his employees, customers, and authors, whom he likes to keep in close contact with.
@openjonathan – Jonathan Schwartz is the CEO of Sun Microsystems. Schwartz thinks that it’s important to reach out to people in whatever format they choose. He has apparently decided that Twitter is one of those formats, and he is currently connected through Twitter with 6,344 people.
Unless you are a very famous or a very successful CEO, why should I follow you on twitter? This is the main question I ask myself, and it is the question that stops me from using Twitter to promote my business — I look at it from other people’s shoes and ask…”why would they care?”
really would like to hear some success stories that can persuade me otherwise!
Twitter has been one of the most effective tools for me as CEO of MediaTrust along with LinkedIN, Facebook and blogging. I allows me to be accessible, and in touch with my company, industry community and follow other thoughts leaders. I cant imagine what it would be like running a company with out it.
Being famous doesn’t really have anything to do with whether or not you should follow someone. You should follow them on Twitter because they provide you with quality information that interests you…and that’s it.
We use our company Twitter account to provide information around entrepreneurship and startups, because that is who our customers are. We also use it to respond to customer complaints & answer questions about our product.
Our CEO and CTO, use their Twitter accounts along the same lines but also to talk with other entrepreneurs, answer questions and connect with our customers. People follow them because they are interested in the information they provide, and that is it.
I’m not an advocate for everyone using Twitter but there are definitely advantages when done right. We have saved and gained customers, increased site traffic and promoted new features just through Twitter.
this is a very interesting article! keep posting!
Thank you for great inspiration !
Good article. I am actually looking at George Colony's tweets right now for research and a better understanding of developments in the IT industry among other things.
This really a great information
But now left twitter, start mobile marketing. Today Mobile marketing is the most growing marketing strategy these days to promote brands, business, services and organization. Mobile marketing come in focus in recent few years, especially due to fast growing mobile phone uses across the world. Analyst Estimate that in 2008 about 3.4 billions text messages send worldwide and the response rate of these text messages were about 70%, this statistic attract shoppers, business organization to invest in mobile marketing. Today all top brands and organization using mobile marketing campaigns to promote their products.
thank you for this reference. yes, Twitter is so helpful to promote your business. you can write the message of 140 character on Twitter account.
[...] que executivos de grandes corporações estão twittando por aí? Não por acaso, encontrei esse post do Jared Reitzin apontando como 15 CEOs de grandes companhias estão utilizando a rede social. Boa maneira de ver como eles estão fazendo [...]
Hi! This is such a great article and I am sure a lot of entrepreneurs are going to benefit from this. I have been giving advice like these to many up and coming business people and have been successful so far. I am Donald Brownlie Fleming, an Australian Entrepreneur, ebook author (Master Selling by Donald Brownlie Fleming) and a Philanthropist. If you have time, maybe you can visit me too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_ATM
Stephen- Billy Dec is a Twitter guru…and look at the success of Rockit Ranch Productions.
Below is a link that answers 5 questions that you will find interesting and helpful in your company..
http://bit.ly/hN8jeb
Stephen there are actually a number of answers to your question but the most important one I believe comes down to knowledge. i am not a famous CEO, but I am a thought leader in mobile. I eat sleep and breath the industry. I know the trends and stats. To my build my own personal brand I need to promote myself and what i know. Twitter is a dead simpele way of sharing knowledge with links to articles and sound bytes on important topics. I imagine that anyone following me would become a better mobile expert as a result. There are millions of other people out there like me who are mavens on their industry and share valuable information. As a busy CEO you don't always have time to write an article or blog, which is one of the main reasons micro blogging like twitter are so successful.
BTW, i am pretty sure that Rocket Ranch is a client of mobileStorm's
Great tips for an entrepreneurs on how to make use of twitter for his/her business.
That is the thing about Twitter. Who the hell wants to hear about what I have to tweet about. Unless I am a famous person, or the CEO of a huge corporation, I fail to see how twitter can do anything to help my sales. The same thing goes for Facebook.
Nice spam. This article is about getting a social following through platforms like Twitter. All social platforms are mobile now. There is no reason to leave these platforms for "mobile marketing". These social platforms ARE mobile marketing and much, much more.
Interesting stuff, thanks for sharing.
Great question Survey Master. Have you heard of TweetAdder? Its an awesome program. Let’s say there is a conference where you know your industry peers or clients go to. For me that might be Summit Series (see my previous post on this amazing conference). They use a hash-tag like #SummitSeries. The way twitter works is that if you follow someone, there is a good chance they will turn around and follow you. So tweetadder automatically starts following people that have included whatever hash-tag you are looking for. There are all kinds of features but you can have it stop adding at a certain amazon. You never want your ratios (the # of people you follow compared to the # of people that follow you to be to out of alignment, so just take your time and try and stop following people that don’t make sense to you, and pay attention to the ones you really enjoy. Best of luck!
Enter teI really enjoyed reading your blog. I found the information interesting and educational. I will be visiting on a regular basis. Thanks for a good read!
xt right here!