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Top CEOs love Twitter and LinkedIn but Facebook and Google+ usage lags, says Weber Shandwick study

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By Nesh Pillay | Reporter

May 18, 2015 | 2 min read

Twitter and LinkedIn appear to be the social media channels of choice for chief executive officers (CEO) of top companies according to a study by PR agency Weber Shandwick. However, Facebook and Google+ usage among the execs lags.

Weber Shandwick studied the social media habits of 50 CEOs from companies that appeared in the 2014 Fortune Global 500 rankings. The executives were from the US, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America.

The study showed that CEOs are using social media twice as much than they did in 2010. Still, only 28 per cent of global CEOs reported having a social media account at all.

“CEO social engagement is a reputational must today. Business leaders are increasingly turning to digital platforms to share their company story, reach broader networks of stakeholders and join online conversations where their company is already being talked about,” wrote Leslie Gaines-Ross, Weber Shandwick’s chief reputation strategist. “CEOs who don’t embrace online communications risk being left behind.”

The most popular networks among those studied were LinkedIn and Twitter, with 22 per cent and 10 per cent reporting usage respectively. However, none of the CEOs said they used Facebook or Google+.

While the study represented the number of CEOs with social media accounts, it didn’t take frequency of usage into account, with some CEOs only tweeting a handful of times a year.

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