UberCEO Survey: CEOs Of Fortune 100 Snub Social Media - None Blog, Only 2 Twitter
By Tom Foremski - June 24, 2009
A survey of CEOs of Fortune 100 companies by UberCEO, found that their involvement in social media is almost none existent. No CEOs blog and only two have a Twitter account.
"I didn't expect CEOs to be heavily involved in social media but I was very surprised to see how few there were," said Sharon Barclay, founder of Blue Trumpet Group, which publishes UberCEO.com. It's a San Francisco based firm that helps manage the online reputations for senior executives.
Here are some of her findings:
- Only two CEOs have Twitter accounts.
- 13 CEOs have LinkedIn profiles, and of those only three have more than 10 connections.
- 81% of CEOs don’t have a personal Facebook page.
-Three quarters of the CEOs have some kind of Wikipedia entry, but nearly a third of those have limited or outdated information.
- Not one Fortune 100 CEO has a blog.
- Twitter was the least used service by Fortune 100 CEOs, despite being one of the fastest growing social media networks.
- Wikipedia had the highest level of engagement among the Fortune 100 CEOs, yet 28% of those entries had incorrect titles, missing information or lacked sources.
- LinkedIn, a site mainly used for professional networking, only attracted 13 Fortune 100 CEOs, five of which had just one connection.
- Three CEOs stood out from the pack on LinkedIn, each having more than 80 connections. However, they are all from technology companies – Michael Dell (Dell), Gregory Spierkel (Ingram Micro) and John Chambers (Cisco).
Ms Barclays' interest in the subject was piqued recently when she was researching a senior executive at one of the largest US technology companies. Google results linked his name to a sexual offender. She was surprised that he hadn't taken steps to distance himself from his online namesake.
"A company's brand value is closely tied to its CEO and senior executives. Companies need to pay attention to managing their online reputations. Also, by snubbing social media, CEOs can appear to customers as being disengaged, disinterested, and disconnected. That's not a good message."
Ms Barclay says she will repeat her survey next year.
Here is a more data from the survey:
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Comments (2)
An F100 ceo has a business to run, not waste time with social media toys - and, please, don't proffer that "SM" is now an integral part of business these days. Do you have any more self-serving surveys to foist upon us?
Posted: June 24, 2009 9:49 AM
I agree. If I were a shareholder of a F100 company I wouldn't want to see the CEO Twitting away all day. However, I would want to see some people in the company active in the social media that matters to their customers. That's what is missing from this survey--an audit of an organization's media footprint. All companies today are media publishers in one way or another, and they need to make sure the right people are in charge of the publishing. CEOs need to mandate that this is being done but they don't need to be doing it themselves.
Posted: June 24, 2009 9:57 AM