PepsiCo’s Bonin Bough: CEOs Should Tweet, But Only If They Want To

PepsiCo Social Media director Bonin Bough thinks that CEOs who are comfortable on Twitter and Facebook can really help their companies out. “You look at a guy like Tony [Hsieh] from Zappos—I mean, wow!” says Bough. “How amazing has he been in terms of paving the path for forward-thinking CEO’s on these type of platforms.  But even more than that, what he’s done to drive his business and the reputation.  I think that we fail sometimes to realize how much reputation actually drives profitability of business.”

In his Big Think interview, Bough says that it all boils down to the type of CEO at your company, and whether they’re going to have fun with the medium.  “Are you the type of CEO that’s gonna be happy participating in this and find it a joy versus a must-do?  That’s the last thing you want is …ugh,” says Bough.

Bough also talks about how companies can form deeper connections with their customers using social media. Essentially, “the rule book is open,” he says. It’s all about using the online resources creatively and making sure that you’re using the technology toward the company’s ultimate ends—which is getting customers to engage more and purchase more.

“Community organizing is hard work,” says Bough. “I guess if you do it well you can become president.  But, I think community building is hard work, and I think there’s a lot of lessons to be learned from some of the early pioneers like Guy Kawasaki building a community around … an email newsletter… or what the video game guys have done with building a community around video games—communities that are so vibrant that they can drop a video game into it and turn it into a billion-dollar blockbuster because they know who the alpha dogs are there.  I think that that’s the same kind of thing that you face when going into Facebook and Twitter.”