Tough conversations in corporate social media

Successfully engaging in social media is truly a rain or shine endeavor. Recently, we saw how GE covered a major re-org using multiple social media tools and thought we’d continue the theme by looking at how some other organizations and executives have discussed difficult topics through social media:

Tesla: “Extraordinary times require focus”

When Telsa made the decision to reduce headcount and consolidate operations, they broke the news first on their blog. Even though some employees had not yet been told, CEO Elon Musk believed it was the right thing to do, telling the New York Times he felt it was important to act first in order to prevent the spread of inaccurate information.

Jerry Yang: “Stepping down”

In his farewell post as CEO, Yang highlights the changes Yahoo! experienced over the past year and describes why he will always bleed purple.

Mark Cuban: “The SEC” and “SEC P2”

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and chairman of HDNet, has been blogging his responses to the SEC’s notice of legal actions against him. To date, the two posts have a combined total of nearly 1,000 comments.

GM: “An Open Letter to Thomas L. Friedman”

In his appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, Thomas Friedman criticized GM on government aid, saying, “So, show me a plan…” — and in an open letter response, GM’s VP of Global Communications linked to the video and responded by highlighting company developments and objectives, and closed with the following:

Please know that you have an open invitation to come and visit GM. We’ll be happy to brief you and we’ll even show you the cool stuff.