APAC CEOs need to up their social media game, here's why

Research released from global public relations firm Weber Shandwick found 80% of the chief executive officers from the world’s top companies are now engaged online and via social media. Yet, APAC CEOs are way behind their US and Europe counterparts.In fact, APAC CEOs have not experienced any growth in their online sociability at all since 2012. In the report, “Socialising Your CEO III: From Marginal to Mainstream”, US-based CEOs are surpassing their peers with 94% of them being socially active online. Meanwhile, European CEOs have made great leaps in sociability over the past few years and are catching up with US-based CEOs.So why are APAC CEOs not taking to social media?It could be due to the Asian culture, explained Tyler Kim, Weber Shandwick’s head of corporate and crisis in Asia Pacific.Despite there being several social media-savvy CEOs in Asia Pacific, it appears they are not prevalent enough.Kim added that CEOs within Asia Pacific were likely to be conservative in line with their tradition and culture. The fragmented social media landscape and multitude of social platforms in Asia may be contributing to the confusion.“Nonetheless, there is great opportunity, as is being witnessed in the US and Europe, for the CEO to be more open and accessible and carefully align their persona with the brand they represent,” Kim said.Chris Perry, global president of digital at Weber Shandwick, added that CEOs can help enhance and strengthen the reputation of their companies by taking an active and visible role in creating and sharing branded content through their company sites and social media.“The proliferation of sources, the unpredictability of news cycles and the explosion of new, highly visual media formats can be a challenge to any company, but it’s also a massive opportunity to engage and connect,” Perry said.The rise in usage of multiple channels drives CEO sociability Weber Shandwick’s report also found that today CEOs from the world’s top companies are visible on their company website (68%), company YouTube channel (38%) and social networks (28%). Meanwhile, globally, the rate of CEOs using LinkedIn has nearly quadrupled since 2012, making LinkedIn the most popular social network for top executives in 2014.Twitter has also contributed to the growth in social network use. It now appears that CEOs are more confident about how to use Twitter without causing alarm and reputational harm. (Read also: Should CEOs tweet?)While being social was once considered risky, explained Leslie Gaines-Ross, Weber Shandwick’s chief reputation strategist, it is now clear that having an online engagement strategy that extends through multiple channels is a “reputational imperative for business leaders today”.In fact, CEOs who embrace online communications have an opportunity to tell their company story and connect with broader networks of stakeholders more than ever before. Communicating online is the norm for today’s CEOs rather than the practice of a select few.Additionally, CEOs are realising they need to use various channels of engagement to communicate with a diverse stakeholder set. One form of communication no longer suffices under today’s demand for transparency and engagement.So, how do you get your CEO to become socially active?Weber Shandwick has outlined five key ways to help companies optimise their online storytelling to help bolster their reputations.Socialise the executive bench: Sociability starts below the CEO level. As we see from assessing the sociability of the most powerful women in business, sociability begins before taking the top job. Those executives who have the social know-how when they step up to CEO will have an advantage over the competition and may even have brighter career prospects.Choose platforms wisely: Find the right social vehicle for CEOs, especially those who are hesitant to be social. CEO sociability is inevitable, so they need to embrace it in some form.Listen closely: For those CEOs still hesitant to embrace social media, listening and watching should be the first step. Monitoring the online conversation is a way to gather data on stakeholders and gauge what is being said about their companies.Embrace a media company mindset: Take hold of the trend in narrating the company story and use the company website as a media platform to publish content. Feature the CEO regularly, even if it is footage from a speaking engagement or a snippet from a town hall meeting.Socialise the CEO’s biography: The CEO’s biography or profile on the company website is a central place to show off a CEO’s assets. If the CEO has social networks, link to these profiles from the CEO’s biography.In “Socialising Your CEO III: From Marginal to Mainstream”, Weber Shandwick researched the online activities of CEOs from the top 50 companies in the 2014 Fortune Global 500 rankings, including 17 CEOs from the US, 19 from Europe, 11 from Asia Pacific (APAC) and three from Latin America (LatAm).The firm audited a range of sites and platforms to see how those CEOs are engaging socially and compared these results to its 2010 and 2012 findings.(Photo courtesy: Shutterstock)