Grow Your Company Or Be Active On Social Media?
Should the CEO blog? It seems like a question rooted in 2008, but now that blogging could include things like tweeting, creating videos on YouTube, updating a Facebook profile or taking part in LinkedIn, it may well be high time to start asking these questions all over again. The reasoning for this line of questioning comes via a press release issued recently titled, Fortune 500 executives behind on social networking. A study done by Domo and CEO.com looked at the online engagement of Fortune 500 companies’ top brass and compared it to that of the mass population. The key takeaway? Less than thirty percent of the Fortune 500’s top executives have (at least) one profile within a social media channel and the vast majority have none.
“I’d like my life back.”
During the BP oil spill crisis, then CEO, Tony Hayward, became known for his infamous line: “I’d like my life back.” Social media and online social networking force individuals to become public. They also force these same individuals to become active media entities unto themselves. These people are no longer just leading a company but are expressing their views and perspectives.
This – as you can well imagine – is not for everyone. Some have done it exceedingly well as a platform to share ideas and thinking to foster better relationships with everyone from shareholders to employees to customers, but the majority of them (according to this press release) are simply avoiding it… like the plague.