While the number of chief information officers using social media may still be relatively small, a recent survey found 92 percent of those using Twitter believe it's an effective business tool.

In a recent webinar on the subject, Ralph Loura, CIO at the Clorox Company, admitted he was somewhat skeptical at first, but committed himself to fully engage with the platform for a month. Loura quickly became an avid user of the tool and said it allows him to conduct informal crowd sourcing, build a peer group of CIOs to bounce ideas off of and look beyond his enterprise in order to combat group think.

According to the survey of executives on Diamond Research's CIO Twitter Dashboard, 87 percent say Twitter helps them gather information on technology, while 72 percent cite innovation and 65 percent say strategy. But Loura said it's also proven to be an effective tool for recruitment.

Beyond using his Twitter account to post job openings in his department, he said it's a great for talking up opportunities. A lot of people think of Clorox as a 95-year-old company, he said, but "[I'm] getting the word out to the tech community, that we're an interesting company doing really innovative things around digital marketing and branding, consumer insights and driving that back in a connected way to the IT function."

It's a helpful tool beyond the IT function, as well said David Buckholtz, divisional CIO at Sony Pictures Entertainment. As employees across all departments are being asked to do more little things to improve the bottom line, he's been encouraging employees to merge personal social media use with information about the company. "There's actually a changing mentality about that as the business is using it," said Buckholtz.

For more:
- see this press release on the survey
- view the webinar

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