25 Top social CIOs. How much are they really so? LinkedIn analysis (1)

Having learned about the 25 Top Social CIOs I decided to find out how much those are really by analyzing their LinkedIn profiles and so get a gross clue.

I recently came to know about the list of 25 Top Social CIOs in a Personal Branding training course prepared and taught by @EsmeraldaDíazAroca. That list is the result of a research performed in 2012 by Harmon.ie. The activity of 250 Forbes companies CIOs in the most relevant social networks was gathered and then an algorithm developed by @MarkFidelman, who belonged to Harmo.ie leadership at that moment, applied to produce the ranked list.

If you are not convinced about the importance of the matter, you should check out this video where Avon’s CIO, Donagh Herlihy (by the way, one of those 25 Top Social CIOs), put both relationships and networking among the three top priorities for any CIO.

One key conclusion about CIOs was: 

“The most striking finding of our study is that only 10% of the Fortune 250 CIOs are themselves social. The rest, apparently, do not recognize the importance of being social, or are delegating the task to a subordinate”. @MarkFidelman also commented the results in Forbes. So far so good. We know these 25 are the top ones in a world of CIOs apparently not very social. 

Still, how good are those CIOs about social stuff?

I mean that it is certainly brilliant to be on the top, however, it does not mean you are doing great, just better than the rest below. Therefore, I decided to perform my own (quick and dirty) research by focusing on LinkedIn to get a gross, qualitative and quantitative glimpse of those guys. Here is the outcome.

What characteristics make a good social CIO that can be identified with a reasonable quick inspection on a LinkedIn page?

I identified the following areas:

1. Reachability or how easy to connect. We can get an overall idea by checking the configuration of that action –standard or restricted, i.e., you need to know his or her e-mail address- and connection info populated that would allow you to reach out directly to he or she, for instance an e-mail address or a telephone number.
2. Social friendliness or profile appropriately customized to be easily found and identified. We can check the photo, the professional line, the URL customization, and the presence of visual info (not just text) to obtain a flavor of this point.
3. Social activity or how much web stuff is in place. Referenced twitter account and websites, received and given recommendations, and number of connections can give us a good idea.
4. Other non-social points or taking advantage of the effort to look at some other interesting stuff, such as type of LinkedIn account (Premium or not), and new job compared to the 2012 list.

Then, I performed a review of all points above per each Top Social CIO LinkedIn profile. Interested in the findings? Wait for the second part of the post... I promise it will not deceive you.

Photograph references:

• "Social Network Business" image courtesy of suphakit73 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net