CEOs a Little Late to Social Media Party

The web site UberCEO.com (pretend there’s an umlaut) recently surveyed business leaders’ use of social media and the findings were a little surprising — at least to me.

We’re surprised, but not shocked, to find that the top CEOs in the country appear to be mostly absent from the social media community.  That’s the result from research we conducted over the past several weeks.  We looked at Fortune’s 2009 list of the top 100 CEOs to determine how many were using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, or had a blog.  The results show a miserable level of engagement.  Here are the topline results:

  • 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  • Three quarters of the CEOs have some kind of Wikipedia entry, but nearly a third of those have limited or outdated information.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.

I’d imagine most of these CEOs would make the argument that they’re "too busy doing actual work" to engage in social media. Do you think that’s the right attitude, or are they missing out on exposure or improved customer relations for their business by not being engaged?

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