Online Real Estate Technology

There’s a very interesting report from UberCEO about how Fortune 500 CEO’s in the US are largely absent from any form of engagement with social media. The survey revealed:

Another interesting find is that Twitter was the least used service by the Fortune 100 CEOs, despite being one of the fastest growing social media networks. Wikipedia had the highest level of engagement among the Fortune 100 CEOs, yet 28% of those entries had incorrect titles, missing information or lacked sources.

LinkedIn, a site mainly used for professional networking, only attracted 13 Fortune 100 CEOs, five of which had just one connection. Three CEOs stood out from the pack on LinkedIn, each having more than 80 connections. However, they are all from technology companies – Michael Dell (Dell), Gregory Spierkel (Ingram Micro) and John Chambers (Cisco).

While there were slightly more Fortune 100 CEO users on Facebook than on LinkedIn, most of them had limited information on their page and few friends. More surprising is that no Fortune 100 CEO has a public blog that could be easily found.

In my opinion, the top CEOs appear to be disconnected from the way their own customers are communicating.  They’re giving the impression that they’re disconnected, disengaged and disinterested.  There’s no doubt that some would be nervous of regulations that make CEOs cautious about communicating freely, but they’re missing a great opportunity to connect with their target audience.  The survey also showed some of the reasons CEOs aren’t using social media is because of:

1. Fear
2. Lack of knowledge
3. Time constraints

CEO’s can really learn a lot about how consumers use their product or even relate to their company by using social media as a research tool. I believe that customers who can talk with or communicate with a CEO would have a far better engagement with that company. The one thing about social media is it reveals the culture within a company, be prepared to share information with your followers and engage and interact with them, it’s the best form of market research you and your company will ever have.