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If you haven’t seen the slide show and information assembled by Uberceo the basic jist of their findings are that the vast majority of Fortune 100 CEOs aren’t participating on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, and none have a blog.
The original piece isn’t nearly as asinine as many of the articles linking to the results and providing their own commentary about how “…it shows the relatively low importance social media still has in a lot of organizations.”
My first problem is that everyone seems to think that having Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook accounts automatically means you’re connecting with your fans. I’ve said countless times, there’s no right or wrong way to do “social media,” but there are certainly ways that are more conducive to adequately listening to your customers, providing value, and ultimately influencing the bottom line.
And for every Red Bull Fan Page there’s probably 20+ brands doing a crappy job.
Those platforms aren’t ready-made solutions, they take a lot of nurturing to grow and excel, and that’s provided you have the right strategy in place beforehand.
Here’s something else to consider…
Maintaining even one of these (blogs included) in a way that allows for genuine and consistent communication with a large network is very time consuming.
Do I think it’s great that Brian Dunn (Best Buy CEO) is so socially media savvy? Absolutely, but honestly, I’d like to think most CEOs are too busy innovating, managing, and trying to keep their companies among the premiere in the world to have significant time allotted for social networking.
Just because a CEO doesn’t Tweet doesn’t mean he doesn’t embrace social media. It doesn’t mean the company isn’t taking it seriously. It doesn’t mean that they’re putting their company at risk either. I’m certain those CEOs have CMOs who have VPs who can ensure that a competent team of individuals are championing a brand’s social media efforts.
Chances are that team has a half hour to write a weekly report on all the information they gleaned from listening to consumers, participating in authentic conversations about the brand, and whatever else for the CEO. In the meantime, (s)he can keep running the company and we can keep insisting social media is the silver bullet to save the world.
That’s preposterous and so are CEOs spending significant time on social networks.
Do you think CEOs should be deeply entrenched in social media? Better yet, how much time would you allocate to social media if you were the CEO of a Fortune 100 company?
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Comments
06.30.09
Thanks for this post Ryan. I thought the survey by UberCEO and their assessment of the results was good. I agree with you that each CEO will need to evaluate social media and determine if their time is worth the potential reward. There is no doubt social media is time consuming. I think the UberCEO article correctly pointed out that not every CEO should participate in every aspect of social media. I think they should experiment with one aspect of social media they think may work out for them. How else are they going to know if it will work? Fear was given as the first possible reason for not adopting some form of social media. I wonder how much of that fear is being generated from the legal department of these companies.
06.30.09
@Mark - Thanks for you insights. You bring up a couple of great points. First, that they should probably try these tools, evaluate them for themselves to get some indication of the value they can potentially provide their business. Second, I think you're probably right about the fear aspect. It's hard for me to think that way coming from a smaller company where we essentially have free reign provided we're using good judgment and adding value. I suspect the red tape affiliated with Fortune 100 companies is endless.
And I didn't take issue with UberCEO's study as much as I did the ridiculous responses coming from the echo chamber.
06.30.09
You're spot on.
Does a good CEO need to watch TV in order to prove he values his company's TV commercial presence? Do they need to purchase their groceries on Amazon to prove they value their company's online store?
I see two main roles of a CEO:
1) Hire great people (and with a great marketing department, they would probably consider social media as well)
2) Focus the vision of the company (and unless the company is in the social media industry, this will be entirely unrelated to social media)
06.30.09
I agree to a certain extent.
I think they need to assign someone to the space just to keep up with technology. I am all into social media but I also know their is a digital divide still. Between the haves and have not's and what if they think this is just a trend which will pass? By not embracing the change are they doing a disservice to their organization?
What ever direction they feel is necessary to survive they need to embrace. If they are not fulfilling their mission statement then there is a true problem.
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