Making meatballs. Taking the kids to hockey. Investigating high bank fees. Reading Fortune.
Peter Aceto, chief executive officer of ING Direct Canada, is busy - but not so busy that he can't find time to share bits of his life through Twitter and its latest offshoot, ExecTweets.
Few Canadian CEOs have embraced the new tool like Mr. Aceto, whose daily updates range from the philosophical ("great leaders...seek out those with differing viewpoints") to the personal ("parent teacher interviews tonite. found out my kids are not abnormal") to the downright funny ("dressed like a banker today - yuk!").
"I think it will reflect well if I'm honest and authentic, if I let people in and tell the truth - and show some vulnerability," Mr. Aceto says.
His introduction came at a meeting with his company's branding agency a few months ago. The discussion revolved around social media, and the agency's founders mentioned a thing called Twitter. Mr. Aceto checked it out, began toying with it Feb. 3 - and to his surprise, he says, he liked it.
He works 10- to 11-hour days, but still finds five or six minutes a day (and occasionally half an hour) to share his thoughts, mostly tapped out on his BlackBerry. His 600-odd updates to date range from running races to reminding customers about the importance of saving.
Twitter is one of the fastest-growing social websites, and is particularly popular in the workplace to network or follow what other people are thinking or doing. The key though, is brevity - all updates are kept to 140 characters or one to two pithy sentences.
Mr. Aceto's main objective, he says, is to build trust - promoting corporate values such as openness and transparency. The payoff in marketing can't hurt, either. He has been asked to speak at several public engagements about his twittering, and more than 500 people follow his tweets.
Hundreds of North American executives are piling into Twitter to help put a human face on their corporate brands, connect with customers and share what they're reading and who they're meeting.
It's easy to dismiss the rush to tweet as a fad or shameless self-promotion - but the entries of many leaders can prove surprisingly interesting, despite (or because of) the space constraints.
Blending the personal and the professional, rather than using Twitter to just push products, is what most resonates with readers, says Steve Prentice, president of Toronto-based consulting firm Bristall Morgan. "It's a great opportunity to dissolve some of the built-up hostility we've seen toward companies in the last few months. And the great tweeters are recognizing that to be personal, to be human, attracts buyers and customers," he says.
Mark Relph, self-described "chief geek" at Microsoft Canada Co. (which translates as vice-president, developer and platform group), says tweeting helps to build community, share ideas and put a human face on a large corporation. "It's become an interesting way to help give a personal way of what's going on. People know it's really, really me - I'm the guy running the stuff that supports you. It personalizes Microsoft and gives people an interesting window behind the scenes."
Mr. Relph has twittered for a year and a half on everything from hockey scores to product launches, and developed some ground rules - no names of his family, no tweeting "about the gory details of my life" and no mention of company secrets.
ExecTweets, which posts updates from top business executives on Twitter, was launched at the end of March by Federated Media, in partnership with Microsoft. There are about 100 executives on its site. More broadly, the website Twitter Leaders lists about 300 business leaders who tweet. Joseph Thornley, CEO of Ottawa-based communications firm Thornley Fallis, has been tweeting for two years and has nearly 3,000 followers.
The biggest benefits, he says, are sharing information and bouncing ideas off followers. "A few years ago, we'd pay polling people a lot of money. We don't need that any more because now I can get a good idea about the viability of an idea" from Twitter, he says. "It's not a toy. It's a real opportunity for me."
Among the knocks against Twitter are that it's superficial and inane. The latter can be true. The former isn't, necessarily - many business leaders these days, for example, are circulating a recent Malcolm Gladwell article about rule-breaking underdogs, and commenting on it. Others post links to weightier speeches or news articles.
Michael Ridley, chief information officer and chief librarian at the University of Guelph, is a huge fan.
"The folks I follow, they have something to say and are consistently interesting," says Mr. Ridley, an ExecTweet twitterer. "It's interesting because there are layers of information, and Twitter is opening up new ways of collaborating. The dialogue is very diverse, often deep, and helpful."
Mr. Aceto says Twitter has yielded some unexpected rewards - chiefly, a chance to get customer feedback, good and bad. "I can't quantify whether it's going to pay off," he says. "But leaders have to have a gut feeling about where the world is headed. And my gut says this isn't a fad."
While he's one of the few twittering senior executives in Canada, "I think that's a missed opportunity. If people are going to be talking about your business, I'd rather be there than not."
