Interview with @MichaelJordaan

Michael Jordaan was the first CEO of a South African bank to join Twitter. His authenticity (Jordaan manages his own account) and humour quickly made him very popular. So much so that at the time of writing he had more than 30,000 followers. Twitter was abuzz when he announced that he would step down as CEO of FNB in May this year. Luckily this banker and wine enthusiast still tweets. And he answered some questions for us:

Image by: City Press / Muntu Vilakazi / Gallo Images

Image by: City Press / Muntu Vilakazi / Gallo Images

What won’t you tweet about? And why?

Negative things about our customers – Even though I tweet for fun and in my personal capacity, I remain closely associated with the FNB brand.

You have more than 30k followers. Do you know who these people are? Who do you imagine them to be?

No I do not know who follows me and I actually do not pay any attention to my follower count. I simply tweet about things that I find interesting and it is the closest I will ever come to keeping a diary. I am actually still amazed that other people would choose to follow me and I can only imagine they are interested in the same things that I tweet about: banking, wine, economics and a bit of humour.

Which of your tweets have gotten the most reaction, good or bad? Has this influenced what you tweet about?

The active Twitter campaign by one of our competitors was probably caused by the fun I had tweeting at Bleepbank’s expense. I do make a point of not mentioning specific competitors.

What do you think makes the South African Twitter landscape unique?

The huge diversity in views and the fact that we do not take ourselves too seriously.

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Posted in Interviews
Tweets