Opel CEO Celebrates Three-Year Twitterversary
In the 21st Century, it’s expected that anyone who is anyone is on Twitter. Even presidential candidates need to have an active presence on the social media platform, evinced by daily bad tweeting from Donald Trump adding to the ever-expanding pantheon of bad tweets from Donald Trump. Opel and Vauxhall CEO Dr. Karl-Thomas Neumann is active on Twitter as well (and, arguably, more qualified to become President of the United States than certain purse-lipped, tangerine-faced buffoons even in spite of the whole not being a U.S. citizen thing), having become the first CEO of a European car-maker to join Twitter just three years ago.
Neumann, who you can find on Twitter as @KT_Neumann, has more than 13,000 followers on Twitter as of August 2016, and his tweets in 2015 reached an audience of more than three million people. Three years from Sunday, at a time where he had significantly fewer followers, he sent out his first tweet to the world:
Hallo Welt, hier twittere ich als #Opel/#Vauxhall CEO zum größten #Comeback in der Automobilindustrie /KTN
— Karl-Thomas Neumann (@KT_Neumann) July 31, 2013
Translation: “Hello world, I tweet here as #Opel/#Vauxhall CEO on the biggest #Comeback in the automotive industry /KTN.” Even from an early Twitter-age, Dr. Neumann knew how to ply them hashtags.
Any tweet with the “/KTN” signature comes from the man himself, and any others are likely put out there by Opel’s social media people (or possibly whoever Dr. Neumann hands his phone off to whenever he goes to the gym).
“Twitter provided the initial impulse for Dr. Karl-Thomas Neumann’s social media presence,” said Johan Willems, Vice President Communications at Opel. “He shows exactly how important addressing various target audiences via the right channel and collecting them there really is. Our digital CEO also proves that we take approachability very serious: Our customers are at the center of everything we do.”
To celebrate his Twitter birthday, Dr. Neumann celebrated not by claiming he was viciously attacked by someone who only reasonably criticized him like some people do on Twitter, but by videocasting his thoughts on digital communication and social media. Check it out below, then retweet it for funsies.
Why I believe that social media is important for every CEO! Watch my review of 3 years as #digital #CEO. \KTN https://t.co/wJu1RFVUHg
— Karl-Thomas Neumann (@KT_Neumann) July 31, 2016
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