By Greg Hazley
Although most CEOs are quoted in news stories and use speaking engagements to reach external audiences, most CEOs at the world’s top 50 companies are not using social media and online communications for that purpose, according to a Weber Shandwick study.
Sixty-four percent of that top group of CEOs are not engaged digitally with external audiences, compared with 93 percent that used a more traditional route – quotes in major publications – and 40 percent who booked speaking engagements to non-investor audiences.
Weber Shandwick found that most CEO online visibility is limited to what’s said about the executives on Wikipedia. Only 36 percent make appearances in social media channels or on their company’s website, which most often comes in the form of a letter or “message from the CEO”-type posting.
Leslie Gaines-Ross, who studies online reputation at WS, said a CEO’s time is better spent with customers and employees during a period of economic crisis and battered reputations in the corporate sector, but she expects that paltry digital media performance to trend upward.
“As we continue to track the rise of the Social CEO and chief executives become more comfortable with the new media, we expect that this will change and change fast,” she said.
The Interpublic firm, which polled 60 CEOs from 50 companies in the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific and South America, said the statistics are important because CEOs at “admired” companies, or those with strong reputations, had greater online profiles than those at lesser respected corporations.
Beside letters or CEO messages on company websites, which are utilized by 28 percent of the so-called “socialized” CEOs, some have turned to video or podcasts (18%), while fewer than 10 percent use Twitter, Facebook or external blogs.
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