Should CIOs tweet?

We've been reporting for months now that social media is the new way to communicate with your customers and your workers. It's no longer a fad for Gen Y-ers. It is essential for nearly every kind of enterprise. But the question is just how do you use it, and does it become a hazard for the top IT executives to hop on this trend?

It might be enticing to post a management update on Twitter if you can tweet it with 140 characters. But the real question is whether the CIO should use it, and how?

If you want to show you are a forward-thinking executive then of course you should use it. But it might be more valuable to other members of your staff--your service management staff, for example.

Still, Twitter is something that every CIO must understand and use at times. If you don't, you'll appear stuck in the 20th century, unable to move to the 21st. More importantly, it could cost you business or the disdain of your employees.

"I've definitely seen a few of the use cases--everything from industry analysts to executives--who tweeted when they shouldn't and it's led to everything from lawsuits to lost market share," said Jim Haughwout, vice president of Technology and the CIO of Neighborhood America (NA), an enterprise social networking software development house. He spoke with CIOUpdate about the challenges of tweeting.

So be careful how you tweet. Like any written piece of communication, think before you write and then read it again before you send it. Sounds easy, doesn't it? But remember, there have already been plenty of cases where bad-tweeting has created major headaches at the workplace.

For more on whether you should tweet:
- check out this CIOUpdate article

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