Is your company’s fearless leader social? (And I don’t mean the join-you-for-beers kind.)
Not many are. A report from CEO.com found that 61 percent of CEOs have no social presence whatsoever, and of the ones that do, 70 percent only used LinkedIn. This is despite the fact that 76 percent of all executives believe it’s a good idea for CEOs to be on social, according to an infographic from Weber Shandwick.
Our own CEO, Ryan Holmes, recently wrote on the importance of CEOs being on social media. He explained: “The greatest motivator for CEOs to get on social media may be simple necessity. Social media represents a cultural shift, not just a technological one, and it’s already made the leap into the workplace… In the end, it’s very difficult for a CEO to guide this transformation without ‘getting’ social media on some level—ideally a personal one.”
In an increasingly social workforce, it’s clear that CEOs need to do more than just be on social—they need to lead.
The reluctance of many CEOs to use social networks serves to highlight the significance of the work of those who are—those CEOs who have used social media to establish themselves as thought leaders in their industries and solidify both their company and their personal brands.
Hootsuite collaborated with Xinfu, global CEO experts and coaches, to compile an extensive list of the top 100 CEOs on social media. The rankings combine both quantitative and qualitative factors to determine which CEOs are making an impact.
One of our biggest measures for who to include was decided by answering the question: who is creating true value-add content for their followers? We measured this in terms of each CEO’s originality, industry leadership, and insight into their own organization.
CEOs who we viewed as actively, and consistently, contributing to a leadership agenda were ranked higher. Those who we considered to be overly self-promotional, too formal, or who did not appear to be creating their own content. We also factored in each CEO’s Klout score.
Without further ado, these are the CEOs who are making a name for themselves and contributing to the conversation on social media (click on any entry to be linked to their social profile).
The top 100 CEOs on social media
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