‘Top of the C-suite remains an anti-social network’

Only 26 of the FTSE 100 CEOs maintain a social presence, and 19 companies on the index do not have a corporate Twitter presence at all, according to stamp London’s latest #socialCEO report.

The quarterly review is conducted by CIO UK‘s latest columnist Matt Ballantine, and assigns CEOs a social rating based on their social network presence, activity, and how socially connected their companies are at a corporate level on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Chief executive at ARM Simon Segars was rated the most social, with Burberry’s outgoing CEO Angela Ahrendts dropping a place to third amid a social hiatus ahead of her move to the famously secretive Apple.

Telefonica O2 CEO Ronan Dunne said: “Social media, both Twitter and Facebook, have become the customer service front-line in many cases for a lot of brands.

“It is really important that CEOs engage their social team to ensure that customer service and reputational issues are dealt with so they don’t feel the pressure of having to answer each and every comment.”

Ballantine, whose first article for CIO UK on end-user security was published at the start of the week, said: “The seat at the top of the C-suite remains predominantly an anti-social network.

“Just as the final version of this report was being prepared, #socialCEO top 10 member Ralph Topping, chief executive of William Hill, showed what a tightrope act being a social network-connected business leader can be.

“After an online debate, his Twitter account was switched to private – an act that became newsworthy in its own right. The decision to become a public, networked CEO is one that is difficult to reverse, it seems.”

Furthermore, Ballantine said that while 1.6 million employees from FTSE 100 companies are on LinkedIn, fewer than 200,000 of them would be ablew to find their own CEO on the network.

To read the full report visit: https://stamplondon.co.uk/socialCEO