At Blogher, Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepisco, spoke to 3500 women at Blogher on Saturday. She really set the pace saying that the future of Pepisco is Digital!

Why don’t more CEOs leverage Social?  Or do they?   

A majority 64 percent of CEOs are not using social media to engage with the public and other stakeholders, according to a new study from PR firm Weber Shandwick.

Here’s the facts that I gathered on CEOs using Social.

  1.   George Colony, the CEO of Forrester, had an interesting view on CEOs  This is taken from his interview withBarb Dybwad .   “I polled the audience and asked, “How many people in this audience have a CEO who they think could be social?” And I would say it was about 10%. Yeah. So that’s today — five years from now you put the numbers out. Maybe 20%? And maybe 10 years from now — I think it’s going to be 50% in 10 years. I think boards are going to be looking for people who can be social. Now in crisis, look at Toyota. The CEO of Toyota had a blog, but it was in Japanese. And it was about driving. So, he sells most of his cars to in English-speaking countries, and no one could understand it. That would have been a very good tool for him to use during this crisis, I think, to hear from the CEO in the CEO’s voice. He came and testified in front of U.S. Congress, so he could have preceded it with some talking about it socially, and that would have helped their cause I think.”
  2. On LinkedIn, there are 1.3M people who are listed as CEOs.   Many of them are firms that market to CEOs, but I would estimate about 1M CEOs are on linkedIn.  I could not tell how active they are. 
  3. From PR firm Weber ShandwickThe study also found that the most admired CEOs had a greater online presence (41 percent) than those who were less admired (28 percent). CEOs with more years on the job tended to be heavier social networkers. And CEOs running American companies proved more socially active online than those in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa), Asia Pacific, and Latin America.Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20019465-93.html#ixzz1UYBtOVore

  4. Great case examples. I love Bill Marriott’s blog,  It is sassy, informative, and transparent  http://www.blogs.marriott.com/  On Twitter, I love Zappos’s Tony’s tweets, and on LinkedIn Gary Kelly, the CEO of Southwest Airlines, and his use of Answers.   I’d love to know your FAVORITE CEO bloggers, twitters, etc!

  5. Indra Nooyi Sets Pace at Blogher.  I found that Indra set the pace for other CEOs at Blogher on Saturday by recognizing that her company’s future is tied to digital!   

What do you think?   Should CEOs be Social ?   Or not?