How CEOs Can Leverage Twitter

Is there a journal article that shows the results of your research, or some means of obtaining the regression results for the work described in the "about the research" section?

the most important factor is not what we inform, BUT how we inform. social medias are just tools, it needs more strategy and adaptability to  targetted audiences

Andrea, thank you so much for your comment! We agree that the Business Mavens really have the right mix of tweets that showed both their business acumen as well as personal interests.  Tweeting is both an art and science.  We think some people are better at it - either because it comes naturally to them or they are dedicated to getting it right.  Your point about personality type is very intriguing.  We only could evaluate the output (the tweets) but it would be interesting to see the input (personality type) to see if there is a correlation with our data.  We appreciate your comments about tweets being different than press releases.  For many companies, this is a legal issue.  It is one we think needs to be overcome - the true power of Twitter will be unleashed when CEOs (and others) can post real-time, sincere, and authentic tweets.  Thank you again for your feedback.

Because Twitter can be such a powerful tool for leaders, it is fantastic that there is more academic research on how/why/best ways to use it.  Thank you for this!  More executives should be encouraged to explore the possibilities of using it. 

On that note - two of the points you make here really strike me, in relation to the things I've experienced myself in coaching executives on use of social media.  First)  - the "business maven" type you say does best with engagement likely does so because the interests and shares of info/links seems to reflect a well-rounded individual (and those are the kind of people who are most engaging in "real-life' too. Otherwise -  do too much "business only" tweeting and followers won't feel like they are "getting to know" the executive at all.  Yet, too much personal sharing (a la a personal Facebook feed), and the business-interested follower will quickly be disappointed too.  

Second) the other point you mention that is SO TRUE is that tweets are not press releases.  When traditional PR/communications teams "handle" an executives Twitter feed, it is usually incredibly obvious and stilted or at least incredibly formal sounding.  Traditional communications pros have the historic directive to craft copy that is much more formal and safe than any human would casually do otherwise.  That's a hard pattern to break if you then suddenly are trying to tweet like a human.  

Given the recent COP21, I'd suggest Christiana Figueres twitter feed - and maybe Paul Polman's as well - as examples of a decent balance of prepped messaging and personal messaging -  you can tell which tweets are pre-crafted but also see a lot of tweets that clearly come from a place of personal enthusiasm/passion.  

My suggestion is always that if the executive does not feel any interest in learning to tweet or in developing that sort of authentic engagement with a broader stakeholder community,  he or she should not have an account at all. It won't be worth the effort. A lot of this is simply down to whether or not you (the executive) are the type of person who "gets" it.. and, perhaps most importantly... finds it at least somewhat intriguing or enjoyable.  There is absolutely no way to fake it.  If you are interested enough to give it a go - find someone to help introduce and jumpstart you. You won't be sorry. Twitter can become an incredible tool in your networking and leadership set.