Social media is no longer something new. It’s not the cool thing we all should look into any more. It’s a live, breathing world where fortunes have been made and marketing professionals have been focused. Small companies have become large companies based on the strength of their social media reach. Even Mom and Pop restaurants know the importance and power of social media.
Why is it then, that CEOs and other smart industry leaders often totally miss the facts? Completely oblivious to the trends going on around them. Yes, they know it’s happening, they just think it has no relation to their business or they recognize the importance, have “put their best people on it,” but don’t understand any of it from a personal level. Social media is in fact “for somebody else.”
CEO.com and Domo conduct research annually on Fortune 500 CEOs and where they sit on social media. This year’s report shows an interesting state of affairs. Here are some findings from the report, as well as descriptions of some other forces involved.
- Most Fortune 500 CEOs do not have a single social media presence. Yup, you read that right. In this example “most” is 68% as in two-thirds. It’s real hard to understand social media if you do not participate in any way. If a company used television advertising, the execs would watch television, wouldn’t they? Kind of shows how important social is to them. After all is it quite easy and simple to, for example, sign up for twitter, get an app for your phone, follow a few folks you know and like.
- Of the CEOs that are engaged, most are only on LinkedIn. The CEO.com/Domo report found that 2/3 of them are on one network only and 74% are on LinkedIn. Now that’s good in the sense that it is an excellent social network that a CEO could find useful, etc. It’s not a full view of social media, however.
- These trends trickle down. In smaller companies, my impression is that age is a better determinant of social engagement company size. In the CEO.com study, there is obviously a lack of younger folks in the sample. (Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was the only F500 CEO on all five major social networks.) While there are certainly companies headed up by 20-somethings; it’s just not the norm.
- Social networks are a challenge for anyone trained traditionally. The way you extract value form a market via traditional “interruption marketing” tools is much different in today’s “in-bound marketing” world where companies seek to educate the target market and bring valuable tools and content. I’ve also noticed that the more traditional among us (a group over-represented at the top of all size companies) are not comfortable with the lack of in-your-face “Buy Now!” signals in social media.
I guess it isn’t that this is this particular state of affairs that is the bad news. No, the bad news is that it’s not changing very fast and is not likely to anytime soon.
What is your CEO’s level of knowledge on social media? Is it an active part of their personal brand?
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