How Elon Musk communicates online
ElonMusk, also know as “the real life Iron Man”, is a high-profile individual in the tech space. He is mostly know for being the CEO of Tesla Motors but people who are more involved into technology could also know him for being the CEO of SpaceX, founder of PayPal, founder of the The Boring Company, founder of Neuralink, founder of OpenAI and more. He was also listed in the Forbes list of The Most Powerful People. It is clear that he is a very influential figure and his opinions and ideas are highly valued.
Elon Musk recognises that and, I believe, this is the reason behind his very high activity on Twitter. Going through his account, I would say that his tweets fall into three different categories:
- Promotional/advertising tweets — he promotes a new product, feature, event, goal of one of his companies. These are usually about Tesla or SpaceX and less often about The Boring Company and OpenAI.
- Serious tweets — he voices a serious thought, idea or problem which prompts his followers to think more deeply about it.
- Funny tweets — he mocks a certain company, person or event mostly for entertaining his audience.
Overall, it seems to me that Elon Musk is trying to be as transparent as possible with his followers by sharing his opinion on everything he deems relevant and important enough and by leaving an open and easily-accessible channel for communication with him. He is widely known for voicing his thoughts no matter how controversial they might be.
Bored Elon Musk
Another way Elon likes to interact with his followers is through his alternate twitter account — Bored Elon.
He uses it to share new ideas and inventions that come to his mind. A lot of times, this prompts a discussion between Elon and his followers and, from what I have seen, it is a very effective way of brainstorming which usually leads to many interesting ideas and innovative solutions to a wide range of problems. This account is usually a bit more casual than his main one and the discussions on it do not have a direct connection with his companies.
The Boring Company Flamethrower
In 2016, Elon Musk started a company, called “The Boring Company”. The main idea of the company is to alleviate the problems with traffic in major cities and long-distance (US coast-to-coast) travelling by digging big high-speed tunnels. In 2018, the company was in need of more funding so they launched a number of sales campaigns including Boring Company merchandise, fire extinguishers and most importantly — the Boring Company Not-A-Flamethrower.
In my opinion, the Not-A-Flamethrower was a genius idea by Musk for a coupe reasons. First, because he sold an item that should technically be banned in the United States but he used a clever trick — it was defined as a blowtorch, not a flamethrower, hence the name Not-A-Flamethrower. Second, he did not do any fancy marketing campaigns. He just tweeted about it and people went crazy. And, last of all, by doing that, Elon Musk managed to sell 20,000 Not-A-Flamethrowers which earned the company $10,000,000.
Summary
In conclusion, Elon Musk comes across as a highly intelligent, highly influential individual in the tech world. His work involves a large number of innovative and cutting edge technology which is the reason so many people follow him and are interested in his thoughts and ideas. Elon recognises that and this leads to his high activity on Twitter. His conversations and tweets feel very casual which leads me to believe that his account is not controlled by some PR or marketing team but by Musk himself. This brings a feeling of authenticity and engagement in his audience and results the (mostly) good image that he has.
