CEOs may be more social than you think: Weber Shandwick

The study follows an earlier one by the PR firm, which showed that only 18 per cent of the CEOs surveyed participated on social networks.

The latest report, The Social CEO: Executives Tell All, was based on an online survey of 630 senior professionals from 10 countries around the world, including emerging and developed markets. The survey defined social media participation as “posting messages, videos, pictures, etc. on a social media site.”

From the results, WS concluded that CEOs are finding ways to be ‘social’ without being active on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn—which in terms of risk and appropriateness may not always be the best avenues of communication for them. But more than six in 10, for example, are posting content on company websites.

This is important because the report found that employees (76 per cent) want their CEOs to be social, externally or internally, mainly because employees themselves are on social media. Nearly 90 per cent have a personal social-media account and 60 per cent say that other executives in the firm use social media as part of their jobs. “It is not surprising then that they want to see their CEOs using the same communications channels they use,” said the report. Furthermore, among executives with social CEOs, 69 per cent would like to see their CEOs participate even more frequently.

This is expected to happen. Senior executives from around the globe project a 50 per cent growth rate for CEOs to go social over the course of the next five years.

Executives with social CEOs also say that their leader’s presence on social media makes them feel inspired (52 per cent), technologically advanced (46 per cent) and proud (41 per cent). The majority (73 per cent) search to see what their CEOs are saying on social media.

Social CEOs are also much more likely to be seen as good communicators than unsocial CEOs (55 per cent vs 38 per cent, respectively). With fewer than half of all global executives (47 per cent) describing their CEO as a good communicator, sociability helps change this perception. Only one quality, competitiveness, is more likely to be used to describe unsocial CEOs.

With regards to risk, executives with social CEOs view them as an aid in times of crisis rather than the potential cause of one. A prior study, released in 2012 by WS and research firm Spencer Stuart, found that social media can help resolve a crisis. With the majority of chief communications officers reporting that their CEO played an active role in resolving a company crisis, social media is a tool not to be overlooked when reputation is at stake. Companies with social CEOs may be missing an important opportunity to build their CEO’s reputation and credibility through the rapid response availability of social media when crisis strikes, observed the study.

In contrast, executives with unsocial CEOs believe social media use to be highly risky. Exactly two-thirds of executives with unsocial CEOs believe that it is very or somewhat risky for CEOs to participate in social media. While these executives are significantly more likely to perceive risk in sociability than those executives with social CEOs.

But one Fortune 500 CEO, said the report, believes that the real risk is in not using social media. By not being a social CEO, he argues, a CEO runs the risk of not getting his or her message out. “Your message is getting lost or not heard  if you aren’t doing it. So the null set would be…what happens if you don’t?"