This week another article has come out about Fortune 500 CEOs not tweeting enough. You see this periodically. Generally, the article is something like “I tweet. You don’t. So you’re doing it wrong.” However, it is also from someone who isn’t running a large company.
This is like the guy who watches the pro play a game, and complain about how the pro is blowing the game. If he was playing instead, the team would be winning. And how many people believe the arm chair quarterback? Exactly!
This time, the Fast Company article references a study that says because of this, the collective is missing out on up to $1.3T worth of sales. Now that is a lot of sales, but is the article right?
A lot of studies like the one this article mentions are really “best guesses”. Investors don’t really care. When was the last time you read an article about an investor being upset because a CEO didn’t tweet? What do investors care about?
- Market Share,
- Sales, and
- Profits.
The article says that sales should improve if the CEOs tweet, but its hard to measure that.
As a small business, you can’t say the same. You get to know your customers more intimately. What you need to weigh is your opportunity costs.
If you tweet several times a day/week/etc, what are you not doing instead? Would this activity generate your business revenue? If not, tweet. If so, measure. Do your sales go up after tweeting? Do they go up more than the revenue for the other activity?
Pretty soon, you should be able to see that the best use of your time is for your small business.
About Walter Wimberly