The top executive of the United States has been called the first Commander in Tweet. He has a penchant for tweeting – sometimes multiple times a day and at all hours – giving the media, US citizens and the world plenty of fodder to analyze and dissect. Regardless of where you stand politically, there are good social media lessons herein. Just recently, President Trump’s press secretary said the President’s tweets should be considered official statements.
For all intents and purposes corporate social media channels and executive social media profiles – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more – are a communications stream that should be treated with care and consideration. Executive posts should be thoughtful and genuine not boastful, reactionary or emotional. Posts should be human, not robotic, not a sales pitch and not jargon laden. Executives should consider the audience and community – don’t forget to monitor for @ replies. And please use spell check.
For the communications and PR teams tasked with managing the social streams for the company, monitor your executive social profiles – there could be good repost opportunities or it could be an opportunity to respectfully offer some social media counsel and improve the social program overall.
* A version of this post also appeared in the June 2017 issue of The Spark newsletter.