CMOs on Twitter: Who Tweets fastest?

May 12, 2015: While being active on social media is not a task ordinarily associated with the job of a Chief Marketing Officer, quite a few CMOs are active on Twitter, enough for Social Media Marketing Magazine to publish a list of them curated by Kent Huffman. Like many similar lists of executives on social media platforms, Social Media Marketing Magazine’s list is organized to rank CMOs by influence, status, and follower count. But it doesn’t attempt to quantify activity. So we analyzed the CMOs on Huffman’s list to determine which ones were most active on Twitter using the metric of raw tweet count.

Methodology

Our methodology was straightforward. The Tweets transmitted by each CMO were sampled to determine the number of Tweets sent to followers in the past 7 days, the past 48-hour period, and the past 24-hour period. Tweets and retweets were counted, but “pinned” Tweets pinned prior to a week before the sample date were discarded. Samples were conducted on May 8, 2015. No effort was made to parse/evaluate/interpret the content of any of the CMO’s Tweets, only the frequency at which this content was transmitted to each’s audience of followers.

Results

Major differences were noticed in terms of CMO Tweet velocity. 86 percent of CMOs sampled Tweeted at least once a week; 63 percent Tweeted at least once every two days; and 54 percent Tweeted at least once a day. 14 percent did not Tweet at all in 7-day period prior to the sampling date (see Figure 1)

Figure 1: CMOs on Twitter: Tweet velocity (per week, per 48-hour period, per 24-hour period)

Tweet velocity among CMOs follows a rough power law, or “Long Tail” distribution curve (Figure 2). The top 20 high-velocity CMOs accounted for a disproportionately large 46 percent share of the 1109 Tweets transmitted in the 1 week sample window. (Figure 3).

Figure 2: CMOs on Twitter: Tweet velocity (power law distribution)

Figure 3: CMOs on Twitter: Tweet velocity (high velocity vs. low velocity share of Tweets)

On average, the sampled CMOs Tweeted 13.6 times per week, 3.85 times per 48-hour period, and 2.42 times per day (Figure 4). The highest daily Tweet count during our sample period (24) was recorded by Lynne Johnson, CMO of Consumers Credit Union. As mentioned earlier, 14 CMOs did not Tweet at all during the 1-week sample window.

Figure 4: CMOs on Twitter: Tweet velocity: average Tweet Count

The top 20 highest recorded CMO Tweets in a 7-day period were transmitted by Lynne Johnson (132), Margaret Molloy (119), Amber Osborne (86), Chris Herbert (71), Alan See (65), David Szetala (37), Kieran Hannon (57), John Foley, Jr. (39), David Cooperstein (37), Jascha Kaykas-Wollf (29), Edward Nevraumont (25), Caroline Taylor (24), Cheryl Burgess (24), Donna Lencki (24), Paige O’Neill (23), Ian Gertler (23), Setphanie Fierman (22), Joel Warady (22), and Fred Hagerman (21) (Figure 5).

Figure 5: CMOs on Twitter: 20 Fastest CMO Tweeters

Discussion

CMOs — as a professional group — Tweet far less frequently than the group of Social Media Power Influencers we surveyed several weeks ago, and there’s nothing particularly surprising in this finding. As a class, CMOs are exceptionally busy people (and many clearly prize the opportunity Twitter affords them for telling the world exactly how busy they are). CMOs typically have a wide range of responsibilities ranging from long-range strategic issues to short-horizon tactical concerns. As Wikipedia notes, “ultimately, the CMO is responsible for facilitating growth, sales and marketing strategy. He or she must work towards objectives such as revenue generation, cost reduction, or risk mitigation. The unpredictable impact of marketing efforts, coupled with the need to drive profits, often leads to a short tenure for most CMOs. Forbes reported that the average CMO tenure in 2008 was just over 28 months.”

Whether or not a robust Twitter presence contributes materially to the fulfillment of these responsibilities (and therefore to an improvement in a given CMO’s prospects for job security) is a matter for debate. Some mayt argue that a CMO’s scarce time might be better served in other ways that do not involve direct dialogue with the general public via social media. Others may take the position that a charismatic CEO with a prominent public branding role should actively embrace social media in the same way that he/she does the opportunities for publicity available via traditional media channels.

While few would question the assertion that Tweet content (not just the raw number of Tweets) is an important factor in a given CMO’s effectiveness on Twitter, Tweet quality was outside the scope of this survey. Obviously, the content of social communications (for example, the words, images, hyperlinks and/or emotive symbolic elements) is important. But so is gross output. Multiple studies have validating the proposition that content transmission periodicity has a positive correlative influence on online popularity. Multiple anecdotal reports support the notion that “more is better” on social media (although how much better is anybody’s guess).

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