Social media use for C-suite dwellers can be tough, kind of a “can’t live with it, can’t live without it,” conundrum. According to a 2016 report from Domo and CEO.com, which looked at social media profiles of every CEO on the Fortune 500® list on the six top social media networks, “60 percent had no social media presence at all.” While some CEOs may feel that statistic vindicates their own lack of social media use, here are two great reasons to make social media work for you — albeit with care and consideration.

From Hemingway to every other self help book ever written, there's a recurring theme of the value of listening. As marketers, we can get too focused on the messages that we are trying to put out into the market, but the reality is that messaging isn't a one-way street anymore: brands grow and thrive because of advocates and evangelists (not static outbound messaging), consumers demand transparency and expect change to follow feedback. We need to get back to the basics of communication and listen to the feedback, the criticism, the jokes, and the trends. What we call social media listening is the process of hearing what is being said and responding to it, from replying to a tweet to rolling out a new app.