A changing landscape : 61% of decision makers now turn to Twitter.
More people at board level are embracing social technologies, as they fear getting left out of the ‘technology revolution’. When you think CEOs and social media, you inevitably think LinkedIn, but that’s no longer the case. The platform that’s seen the most rapid increase in adoption for decision makers is Twitter. In a study carried out by CNBC, they looked at the growth of Twitter as a business and marketing tool and found that it had a reach of 61%, compared to 31% a year ago. This is not to suggest that LinkedIn is now dead as a business tool, as it also experienced a growth from 52% to 56%. But it is now being beaten by non-business focused networks, in terms of rate of adoption and growth overall. It suggests a changing landscape as Twitter becomes the default place for real-time business connections, offering more than LinkedIn currently can.
Beating Facebook
What’s interesting in this study, is that Twitter is also beginning to dwarf Facebook as the social network of choice for decision makers. While Facebook is still the most popular tool for senior executives, with 77% maintaining profiles on there, this actually represents a drop, from 81% the year previous. Facebook is the only network that saw a reduction in use among executives, showing that social media adoption overall is not slowing down, but that key decision makers within a business are learning to streamline their activity and focus on those channels where they can derive the most value.
LinkedIn may be able to offer the best resource of people online, from a business point of view, but it’s evidently not where businesspeople are seeing the value. Twitter provides a better, more real-time networking experience and it’s developing as the place where business gets done and the best connections are to be had.
Decisions are not made in the boardroom
CEOs, execs, directors, board members all have to adapt to social network technologies because the place that business is done has now changed. Decisions are not made in the silo of the boardroom anymore. Instead, the doors have been thrown wide open and if any meaningful decisions are to be made, then you need to have your finger absolutely on the pulse of what is happening online and what is being said about your business. If what’s said in the boardroom bears no relation to what’s being said about you on Twitter, Facebook etc.. then you risk getting left behind and developing in a different direction to what your stakeholders want or need. The fact is that the ‘boardroom’ as a concept will no longer exist in the traditional sense for much longer, as everything happens externally and it’s opened up through social media.
