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For years, Braden Wallake has posted everything from business lessons to animal pictures on his LinkedIn page. A fateful midweek post on a late-summer day stopped the marketing executive in his tracks. Wallake shared a teary-eyed selfie with a message about his feelings after laying off staff. Just like that, he was the "Crying CEO." "I woke up the next day, texted my marketing person and said, 'I think I went viral last night,'" said Wallake, whose post has raked in more than 57,000 reactions and 10,000 comments. Users blasted the HyperSocial CEO as being "manipulative" and displaying "self indulgence." The photo "would make a great dart board," another wrote.
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Corporate executives and founders like Wallake were sold on the idea that a vibrant social media presence can boost their personal and firm-wide brand awareness. But the reality is less picture-perfect than it's made out to be. In many cases, these leaders come off not as relatable but as cringey. And they're learning the hard way that their digital footprints can even have material business implications. "There can be real benefits from CEOs being online, but there can also be great risks," said Ann Mooney Murphy, a Stevens Institute of Technology professor who has studied how company leaders gain social media celebrity status. "One needs to tread carefully."
The online executive
The pitfalls of social media usage for business leaders are becoming increasingly clear as more executives take to the platforms. Nearly three-fourths of Fortune 500 chief executives had at least one social media account last year, up from roughly half in 2019, data from Influential Executive showed.
More than seven out of 10 Fortune 100 CEOs with social platforms posted at least once a month in 2024, a 32% increase from the year prior, according to an analysis from communications firm H/Advisors Abernathy released this week. CEOs have flocked in particular to the work-focused social site LinkedIn, where they post three times a month on average. An active social media presence can help build brand recognition and drive attention from mainstream news outlets, Murphy said. It can also allow executives to develop para-social relationships directly with consumers — something that was once reserved for more-traditional celebrities like actors or athletes, she said. While company news was king in these posts, H/Advisors Abernathy found executives devoting more social real estate to sharing personal happenings. This softer style of content — examples of which include Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sharing pictures from Taylor Swift's "Eras" tour and Goldman Sachs ' David Solomon posting details for his DJ sets — can help keep followers engaged, Murphy said.
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