Should CEOs be active in social media?

UberCEO, a firm that helps executives maintain their online presence, surveyed the CEOs of Fortune 100 companies and found that none blog, and only two have Twitter accounts.

Some of the additional findings were:

- 13 CEOs have LinkedIn profiles, and of those only three have more than 10 connections. - 81% of CEOs don't have a personal Facebook page. - Three quarters of the CEOs have some kind of Wikipedia entry, but nearly a third of those have limited or outdated information.

Should CEOs be actively involved in social media?

Sharon Barclay, the founder of Blue Trumpet Group, which publishes UberCEO, says she was shocked by her findings. She said that the company customers may be getting the impression that the CEOs "are disconnected, disengaged, and disinterested."

Please see: It's Official: Fortune 100 CEOs are Social Media Slackers

If I were a shareholder of a Fortune 100 company I wouldn't want to see the CEO Twitting away all day, or constantly uploading vacation photos and updating their Facebook status.

However, I would want to see some people in the company active in the social media that matters to their customers. That's what is missing from this survey--an audit of an organization's media footprint.

All companies today are media publishers in one way or another, and they need to make sure the right people are in charge of the publishing. CEOs need to mandate that this is being done but they don't need to be doing it themselves.