Most chief executive officers (CEOs) in India remain relatively inaccessible to consumers on social media as compared to their counterparts in Europe and the United States.
An ECCO International study, that looked at the largest companies by market capitalisation in 21 countries worldwide, showed that 58% of global CEOs were active on LinkedIn, compared to only 20% of Indian CEOs. For Twitter, this was 17% worldwide and just 10% for India.
Leading CEO
Uday Kotak, CEO, Kotak Mahindra Bank, was rated as one the leading CEOs globally on social media with nearly a million followers on Twitter. However, Anand Mahindra, chairman of Mahindra Group and who has 7.2 million followers on Twitter, did not figure in the list. Asked for a reason, a spokesperson for the ECCO network said the study covered the top 25 Indian firms in terms of market capitalisation. Since, M&M did not figure in this list, Mr. Mahindra was not a part of the study, the spokesperson said. CEOs in France were the most active on social media, followed by those in Denmark. Australia and Netherlands shared the third position.
As per a similar study conducted in 2017, CEOs in the U.S. had by far the most followers, despite the country ranking fifth in terms of total presence on social media.
Apple CEO Tim Cook continues to top the chart worldwide with more than 11 million followers on Twitter (an increase of 120% over 2017).
Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft, leads the way on LinkedIn, with over six million followers (an increase of 300% over 2017). Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete, CEO of Telefonica, Spain, is the most active CEO on Twitter and has published over 36,000 tweets since 2010 (an average of 10 tweets per day).
ECCO — a network of independent PR and marketing communications’ agencies across over 40 countries — has analysed social media behaviour of CEOs across 21 nations for the study.
Bhavya Doshi, assistant vice president, ECCO in India, said, “More and more CEOs are active worldwide on the LinkedIn career network and in almost all countries Most CEOs continue to shy away from communication on Twitter, as the language is often more pointed on this platform and hence the risk of backlash from consumers is significantly higher. “With LinkedIn, this risk is lower and [so], more CEOs are recognising opportunities on this channel.’’
