The most influential social media marketing strategy you're missing is your CMO. Here are 3 benefits and tips to build a personal brand.

Twitter now has more than 302 million monthly users, and 96 percent of businesses say they use social media marketing to promote their brands. However, less than one-third of marketing executives are on the social networks themselves, according to recent research from Marketing Land and Interbrand. They’re missing opportunities to support their brands’ overall efforts. 

Less than 1/3 of CMOs have personal accounts on social media to support their marketing efforts

Business adoption numbers would give the impression that companies are making strides with their strategies, but CMO adoption has trailed behind.

As it stands,  66 percent of marketing leaders don’t use personal accounts to support their brand initiative. This is only a 2 percent improvement since 2013, when the Social CEO report revealed that 68 percent percent of brand executives didn’t use personal profiles to promote their companies.

There’s clearly still room CMOs to join the conversation and communicate directly with their audiences – a strategy that can have a big impact on the bottom line. Over 80 percent of customers say they have a positive impression of executives who are on social media, and would rather do business with brands that are well represented on social channels.

3 Benefits of having CMOs on Twitter

1. Social media buy-in

Marketing executives who actively use social media will see the benefits of the network first-hand, and can best advise their brand strategies. CMOs who have social media experience will be more apt to invest in efforts that promote the business and build their brand’s footprint through ongoing interactions with fans.

At the end of the day, social media marketing is here to stay and brands would be remiss not to give it a try – and having a CMO that’s active on the network can only encourage the process.

2. Personal branding

By interacting with fellow marketers on social media, CMOs garner trust and showcase themselves as thought leaders in the space. They build influence in the industry that benefits the company. And as individuals, marketing execs can weigh in on conversations where it wouldn’t be appropriate to respond from the brand’s official handle. 

Also, brand executives tend to attract more followers, with the average CMO boasting about 1,500. High-profile executives and highly-active users can attract hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers that contribute to the brand’s presence. 

3. Extended reach

Once a CMO has a follower presence, extending the brand that he/she is representing is easy. If CMOs gain a large Twitter following, they have the opportunity to have as much of an effect on the company’s social success as the brand’s own pages.

As Brafton previously reported, CMOs who are navigating Twitter are discussing more martech topics than ever.

What does it take to build a strong CMO Twitter strategy?

  • Daily updates: People prefer to follow individuals who post content regularly. There’s little benefit to following someone who hasn’t posted in months. 

  • A mix of RTs and original posts: By tweeting about both professional and personal topics, marketers show that there are real people behind the scenes, letting users in on their interests and the brand’s perspective.

  • Response Tweets and interactions: Show that you’re not just pushing out links by responding to posts from followers and actively starting conversations with other people. Users who are engaged get more followers than people who just publish links to articles without commentary.

  • Visuals: Visuals are proven to provide higher engagement for social content. They stand out on users’ feeds and give a glimpse into the Tweeter’s personality (Think: GIFs and photos). 

Considering the above factors, we think Mike Volpe (Hubspot), Beth Comstock (GE) and Stacy Martinet (Mashable) are great examples for fellow CMOs to emulate.

Want to learn more about creating a Twitter strategy and a personal brand? Check out the following resources:

Molly Buccini is Brafton's community manager. She joined the team with a background in digital journalism and social media. She's a theatre nerd, pop culture junkie and lover of summertime.