Why Top Bosses are Taking to Twitter Over Facebook

Social media has changed the way we do everything. We don’t make phone calls anymore, we post things on people’s Facebook walls. We don’t buy newspapers and magazines – or even watch the television – to stay on top of the events and breaking news, we go on Twitter. Nobody even prints off photographs anymore because we would rather play with fancy filters and editing methods on Instagram.

The argument over whether social media has been a good or a bad thing will always rumble on. We hear stories in the news (on Twitter or Facebook of course), about “trolling” and online abuse being sent to people on social media and that is where it does fall down. Without knowing how to block people you are wide open to online abuse because it’s easy to find profiles. However, social media also provides the opportunity for people to have support from others who see this abuse; and it also provides a platform for plenty of good things.

Lots use social media profiles to announce things to their friends such as engagements, pregnancies and births; and of course you can post a picture of you celebrating your graduation or passing your driving test. We use social media for just about everything and it has become a core part of business strategies as well as our social lives.

We can use the various features such as paid and free advertising to reach new audiences and markets that were previously unreachable because either ( 1 ) you couldn’t find them; or ( 2 ) it would have cost an incredible sum of money to advertise on the other side of the world when you’re a small UK business.

All niches are the same, from financial companies like www.buddyloans.com to sporting giants like Manchester United and travel agents like Thomas Cook. Social media is now the best way to interact with our customers and fans, letting them get closer to the people behind the brands and showing that we’re people too, not just business owners after money – a reputation that many received prior to Facebook, Twitter et al.

Today, the majority of businesses around the globe have at least one social media profile – some even employ people specifically to monitor their social accounts to post news, competitions, giveaways and offers or to answer the questions they receive from their customers and followers.

Choosing the right platform to post on is important because not everybody uses every single social network. Facebook, for example, began as a site for students before opening its doors to everybody over the age of 16 (that was also recently lowered), while Twitter has remained free and available to all. However, you wouldn’t post the same thing on both networks – it’s been proven that Facebook is better for visual content, while Twitter is better for short, sharp statements due to the 140-character limit.

Now most CEOs are opting against using Facebook and are favouring Twitter. A recent study of the top 50 companies in the world revealed that NONE of the CEOs have an ‘active’ Facebook account, meaning that they may have a profile but they don’t regularly post anything on their own pages or on those of friends and family; yet the number using the likes of Twitter and the most popular platform, LinkedIn, is increasing.

It’s no surprise that LinkedIn is the most popular with the site targeting businesses and helping them to connect with contacts in other companies and to stay abreast of professional news rather than videos of children laughing for the first time or cats falling off sofas. The fact that Twitter is now more popular than Facebook – to such a large extent too – is somewhat surprising because there are still so many people who use the line “I just don’t understand Twitter”.

Hashtags and the various other terms associated with Twitter can baffle some people, but it appears that the CEOs of the top companies in the world are adopting them wherever possible to liaise with their followers and to find new customers to reach out to with their marketing campaigns.

Social media, undoubtedly, is now as big a part of business strategy as the famous “ten year plan” that everyone talks about. Social posts can help to make or break a company – get it right, and you can find new customers and followers pouring in…get it wrong, however, and it can be disastrous – so make sure you know what you’re doing before you hit the Tweet button. If you don’t, maybe hire someone who does!