My readers and followers know that I am a big proponent of social media for CFOs. Used right, CFOs can use social media to help brand themselves to the benefit of their careers and their employers. I have blogged about CFOs and LinkedIn previously, here, here, here and here.
I recently had a conversation with my friend Cindy Kraft on Proformative about CFOs and Twitter, specifically whether Twitter is helpful to Chief Financial Officers in their personal branding process.
Twitter is not intuitive for CFOs like LinkedIn is. It took me a while to become interested in it and get the hang of it. LinkedIn was a lot easier – I’ve been there for over 8 ½ years so far, and was one of the first 25,000 members back when I joined in 2003.
If you are a CFO that enjoys building relationships with people you would like to know, Twitter is a great place to follow, develop and participate in thought leadership based on your interests. Just having an @name on Twitter and putting it on your LinkedIn profile shows people that are finding you that you know what Twitter is. True, having a Twitter account and not using it may be like using your iPhone just to make phone calls, but at least people will believe that you on top of current trends.
Let’s face it – few CFOs are on Twitter. (You can check out and subscribe to my list of CFOs on Twitter – I add CFOs as I find them). If you are looking to stand out as a CFO, join Twitter and let people know about it. Then, slowly, begin to experiment. If you’d like my help, just add me on Twitter @DergelCFO.
Twitter. It’s good for you. And you might actually like it.
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Samuel,
Have you noticed what types of strategies the few CFO’s on Twitter deploy? My sense is that some (people in general here, not specifically CFO’s) use Twitter to have mini-conversations, others use it to share items that they find interesting or meaningful, without a lot of interaction, some just “lurk” (there has to be a better term for this) to find information to consume, and some use it merely as a channel for advertisement. Thanks.
David
From what I see, there are few CFOs on Twitter that take full advantage of the power of Twitter.
I don`t think it is necessary for CFOs to use Twitter fully to gain advantage.
My CFOs on Twitter list (Link above) currently has less than 200 CFOs. While I don`t have all CFOs on Twitter (yet), it does show that a large majority of CFOs are NOT on Twitter.
So, if you are a CFO and are on Twitter, you have automatically differentiated yourself from the thousands and thousands of other CFOs, no matter whether you use it fully.
Imagine your advantage as a CFO if you were using Twitter fully!
Thanks David as always for your relevant feedback,
Samuel