60% of CEOs Use Social Media to Grow Business: CEO Confidence Index

The business news of last week: America’s CEOs are collectively facing 2012 with a great deal more optimism than what’s been the norm over the past few years.

That news was delivered via the Vistage CEO Confidence Index, a quarterly survey of almost two thousand CEOs throughout the U.S. in an effort to gauge the attitudes and expectations of the business community from a boots-on-the-ground perspective.

For the 4th quarter of 2011, the Vistage CEO Confidence Index shot up 18 percent in the largest quarterly gain since 2009. The Index also showed that CEO confidence is now at its highest peak since early 2011.

But almost hidden within all the positive financial aspects of the report is this nugget about CEOs and the rise of social networking:

60% of Vistage CEOs reported using social media to grow their businesses. When asked on which social media platform they are most personally active, 41% stated LinkedIn and 26% answered Facebook.

That’s almost two in every three CEOs who are actively engaged in social media to grow and strengthen their businesses, in the short-term and the long-term.

Among other implications, this means that today’s CEO is much more directly and actively connected with his or her clients than the CEO of ten or even five years ago.

This surge in the realization of the benefits of technology was echoed in a report late last year declaring that CEOs — and specifically the egos of CEOs — were largely driving the popularity of the iPad. Read that report here.

Interactive CEO Confidence Index Tool

And what better symbol of this growing engagement of CEOs with their company’s tech initiatives than the interactive Vistage CEO Confidence Index Tool available here.

The Vistage CEO Confidence Index Tool opens up all the different angles of the recent economic report, letting you browse about two dozen variations and specific topics while viewing graphical representations of the data.

The most recent results can be stacked up against earlier quarters for comparison; yearly trends can be mapped out on graphs. There’s also a downloadable PDF version and a widget to let you install it on your own site — not a bad idea if your website is geared towards financial services. Check it out here.

The Vistage CEO Confidence Index is a compilation of responses from 1,641 CEOs throughout the United States taken over ten days in mid-December. Vew the full report at PR Newswire.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Keep checking back in the coming days for more reports and insight on the exclusive data contained in The Vistage CEO Confidence Index. Click to read part I in this series: Vistage CEO Confidence Index Takes Biggest Leap Since 2009 or part II: More Hiring, More Investing, Better Economy: Vistage CEO Confidence Index.]

This topic and more are included in the Vistage Connect™ CEO peer advisory sessions. Learn more.

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