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The list of the world’s CEOs regularly includes celebrities, billionaires, big egos, risk takers, and failures. What it does not include are social media experts; but that’s about to change. When IBM (NYSE: IBM) conducted its study of 1709 CEOs around the world, they found only 16% of them participating in social media. But their analysis shows that the percentage will likely grow to 57% within 5 years.
Why? because CEOs are beginning to recognize that using email and the phone to get the message out isn’t sufficient anymore.
- While social media is the least utilized of all customer interaction methods today, it stands to become the number two organizational engagement method within the next five years, a close second to face-to-face interactions.
- More than half of CEOs (53 percent) are planning to use technology to facilitate greater partnering and collaboration with outside organizations, while 52 percent are shifting their attention to promoting great internal collaboration.
- To forge closer connections with customers, partners and a new generation of employees in the future, CEOs will shift their
focus from using e-mail and the phone as primary communication vehicles to using social networks as a new path for direct
engagement. Today, only 16% of CEOs are using social business platforms to connect with customers, but that number is poised
to spike to 57% within the next three to five years. While social media is the least utilized of all customer interaction
methods today, it stands to become the No. 2 organizational engagement method within the next five years.
IBM Study: If You Don’t Have a Social CEO, You’re Going to be Less Competitive – Forbes
