The social media presence of Ibex 35 top executives and their role as influencers

Abstract

Influencers are the new brand narrative. This is why many companies and institutions are positioning their executives –using their full names– to build loyalty amongst their diverse client base. On the other hand, the reputation strategy known as “CEO Executive Visibility” aims to promote a brand by putting the spotlight on its top management and aligning their character traits with the values that the organisation wishes to transmit, thus capturing new audiences, improving follower loyalty and generating more engagement. Along these lines, and using content analysis and quantitative research methods, and combining economic and communication factors as theoretical underpinnings, this investigation examines how the chairpersons of the companies listed in the Ibex 35 (the Spanish benchmark index) use the main social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and personal blogs). The results obtained show how executive visibility strategies are applied in Spain and who the main influencers in this financial environment are. This research evidences that the chairpersons of Ibex 35 companies do not post consistently on social media and that there is a link between the public image of a company’s top management and the perception of a company and its commitment to its audience.

CEO social: análisis de la presencia y actividad en redes sociales de los directores ejecutivos de empresas

“…El estudio pionero sobre los CEO en redes sociales analizó los beneficios de Twitter (ahora denominada X) para las relaciones públicas de los directores ejecutivos (Hwang, 2012). Aunque la mayoría de las investigaciones estudia la participación ejecutiva en las redes sociales en conjunto (Serrano et al, 2020), existen artículos científicos que abordan el compromiso y la presencia activa por plataformas específicas ( Jameson, 2014;Manika et al, 2015;Yue et al, 2019). Sin embargo, no hay trabajos que aborden de forma integral la actividad de los CEO en redes sociales.…”

“…Permite a la alta dirección desempeñar el papel de embajadores corporativos (Wu et al, 2021) que pueden dar forma a una conversación en el microblogging ( Jameson, 2014;Malhotra y Malhotra, 2016). LinkedIn es una de las redes sociales preferidas para transmitir la identidad personal, laboral y organizacional de los CEO (Molina-Cañabate y Suau-Gomila, 2021; Serrano et al, 2020).…”

Corporate social responsibility and its communication on Twitter: analysis of the discourse and feelings generated in society

“…It is considered like a place for citizen journalists and opinion to a global public and it is one of the leading social media platforms used by Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) marketers worldwide (Statista, 2020). Twitter has been used to research about CSR and public opinion (Rodríguez & Chalmeta, 2020) or other sectors like transport (Qi et al, 2020), chemistry (Guerris et al, 2020), medicine (De Las Heras-Pedrosa et al, 2020) or political and executive influence on public opinion (Pérez-Serrano et al, 2020).…”

CEOs as corporate ambassadors: deciphering leadership communication via Twitter

“…Twitter is an interactive platform on which users can follow any other user with a public profile, reply to and repost others' tweets. The flexibility of information sharing and the ease of interaction between Twitter users have rendered this platform an attractive marketing and communication tool in cultivating relationships between brands and their stakeholders (Li and Bernoff, 2008; Serrano et al , 2020; Solis and Breakenridge, 2009).…”