All those posts by CEOs on LinkedIn, Instagram and X: Turns out, they matter. A lot. To both them personally and the companies they lead.
At least, that’s the takeaway of a new study by Stevens Institute of Technology professor Ann Mooney Murphy, which shows that posting frequently, positively and with variety can boost CEO visibility and influence online.
The study, published in the Journal of Management Studies, uncovers how top executives rise to celebrity status on social media — and why it matters for business and beyond.
Drawing on more than a decade of data from 320 CEOs of S&P 1500 companies with personal accounts on X (formerly Twitter), researchers analyzed over 250,000 CEO posts and 1.6 million user mentions of those CEOs. They found that CEOs who post more often, use a positive tone and discuss a variety of topics are significantly more likely to receive high levels of both attention and positive emotional responses from online audiences — leading to what the authors deem “CEO social media celebrities.”
By contrast, posting content that is highly differentiated compared with peer CEOs did not help — and sometimes even backfired.
Social media enables CEOs to form what are known as parasocial relationships with their audiences, in which followers develop strong emotional bonds with public figures whose posts they appreciate, even if these connections are largely one-way and non-reciprocal, the study notes.
Titled The Power of Posting: An Examination of CEO Social Media Celebrity, it was co-authored by Murphy, Ruixiang Song of the University of Tennessee and Yangyang Zhang of Loyola Marymount University.
The findings carry broad implications for corporate leaders, companies and stakeholders. Social media has created a new pathway for achieving CEO celebrity that is very different from the traditional media-driven route. Indeed, the research indicates that, unlike mainstream media, where journalists decide which CEOs make headlines, social media audiences reward CEOs who show up consistently, positively and in diverse ways. And these rewards extend well beyond the boundaries of social media, which has been linked to improvements in the reputation of CEOs and their firms as well as for the CEO’s compensation.
With nearly 5 billion people using social media, the stakes for CEOs have never been higher, Murphy said.
“Social media has opened the door for CEOs to build their own celebrity status, independent of the traditional media gatekeepers,” she said. “Our study shows that consistency, positivity and variety are what really capture online audiences’ attention and admiration.”
Importantly, the study also finds that CEOs who achieve this social media celebrity are more likely to later gain visibility in traditional media, amplifying their reach and influence.
“And those wins often don’t just stay online: Social media celebrity usually leads to a more mainstream celebrity that can boost a CEO’s reputation, raise their company’s profile and even augment their pay,” Murphy said.
