Jumptlist

Leadtail Report: What the CFO is Doing on Social Media

05 Mar, 2014 by Barb Mosher Zinck

Print this article Font size -16+

Leadtail produces some interesting reports that give you a look into what different people are doing with social media. Whether you are trying to figure out where to spend your digital marketing time and money, or you want to know where to spend your time on social media overall, these reports provide a great starting point.

Last month we talked about what B2B Marketers were doing on social media, this month Leadtail has produced the report “How Chief Financial Officers Engage on Twitter“.

The report focused on CFOs and VPs of Fiance in the US (502 in total). These CFOs created 48,671 tweets, and 3,395 shared links between October 1 and December 31, 2013. So what did Leadtail find when they analyzed the results?

First, there’s a good mix of work and personal tweets across the spectrum, as shown by this word cloud:

This gives you a really good idea of the topics that CFOs talk about, and pay attention to. What you take away from this is that CFOs aren’t all business, so if you are trying to reach them on social media channels, find ways to get your brand noticed through websites and online magazines that cover these topics.

All the CFOs tracked were on Twitter, of course, but the next set of popular social networks includes YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn (in that order). In addition, there is an equal amount of tweeting using mobile devices as website tools, which tells you how important mobile marketing has become.

So what kind of content do CFOs share? And what are their favorite places to get content from?

Business & Tech took 35% as shown in the chart above. But notice that News & Lifestyle was just a touch bigger at 38%. As the report points out, both these categories tend to cover current events and politics – both of which could impact the way a business is run. The Business & Tech news also plays to conversations among peers and other executives.

Some of the top sites in each of the top two categories include:

News & Lifestyle: New York Time, Washington Post, Mashable, HuffPo
Business & Technology: Forbes, Wall St. Journal, Business Insider, Inc. Magazine

The report also goes into what sites are retweeted or mentioned the most. Leadtail points out that mentions tend to represent a greater level of engagement, so pay particular attention to those brands when you are thinking about your social engagement strategy.

An interesting thing that I learned from speaking with Carter Hostelley, Founder and CEO of Leadtail is that while this information is great for marketers who are trying to learn how to best reach CFOs, but it’s equally important for CFOs themselves, to help them learn where the best places are to go to get content. As a CFO, when you see a lot of other CFOs retweeting content from an online magazine, you know it must have some great information for you.

Take it further, the demand for executives to have a social media presence doesn’t end with the CEO or the CMO, all executives could be out there talking about current issues and sharing relevant information – it all goes to making the company look engaged and knowledgeable in their industry.

Check out the report, I think you’ll be able to take away solid points that generate many content marketing ideas for your marketing team.

Print this article