In January of 2009 I wrote a Minnov8 post called, “Why Executives Don’t “Get” Social Media” and it hit a nerve: The post ended up with tens of thousands of pageviews. Looks like not much has changed, especially when it comes to CEOs.

More than 4.5 years after that post was written, I received an email today from a woman in PR for CEO.com. Turns out they’ve just released their annual Social CEO Report and found only a marginal increase in social use among Fortune 500 executives since last year. An astounding 68 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs have no social presence at all — not even on Twitter or Facebook. In this day and age, this calls into question their true commitment to their brand.

Their PR woman had this to say about the author, Marc Fischman, and this report: Social media expert, Marc Fischman has a platform that can analyze CEO activity on Facebook and Twitter – down to the impact of a single tweet or post – and the chatter it creates. Armed with this data, he has a unique understanding of which leaders are really advocates for their brands. He understands some of the reasons bosses don’t tweet, but says they are missing out on a tremendous opportunity to extend their brand’s influence with key audiences who want to know what they, as leaders are thinking.

The 2014 Social CEO Report

The teaser page here will enable you to get a sense of what the report offers before you hand over your name, email, company, and other data to snag it:

Are CEOs Finally Going Social?

It’s that time of year again. We searched for the social profiles of every single CEO on the FORTUNE 500® list on five popular social networks to determine which CEOs are lighting up social media – and which CEOs are still in the dark. Here’s a peek at what we found:

• A whopping 68% of CEOs have no social presence whatsoever on the five social networks.
• More CEOs are on Instagram than on Google Plus.
• On average, younger CEOs are much more social than older CEOs.
• LinkedIn dominates as the “entry” network of choice for CEOs. Of those CEOs who are only on one social network, 74% are on LinkedIn.
• Only 69% of CEOs who have Twitter accounts are actually tweeting.

There is a lot of very good information in this free report and you should download and read it. That said, Fischman concludes with two slides which, in my view, the data presented doesn’t seem to support his “educated guesses“:

• The first cites a Weber Shandwick study (without an actual citation) which purports to outline that CEOs are just “opting to communicate internally” and that CEOs who are on social media are “viewed as more innovative.”

• In what I view as a leap in conclusion, Fischman states that CEOs who are NOT on social media “are doing their brands and companies a massive disservice.

My take? That the trend in CEO-level social media engagement and use is increasing but Fischman needs to talk to as many CEOs as he can to find out why more of them don’t leverage social media. Or, if Weber Shandwick’s study included deeper CEO-level insights, he should include that data so we can gain those insights ourselves.

Most of my client CEOs are adamant that they just don’t see their personal social-media-payoff-for-time-investment. This goes beyond a monetary return on investment (ROI) for company management and use of social media.

I’ll simply reiterate my “bottom line” opinion,stated in my last paragraph in my 2009 post, about why most executives still don’t use social media:

One senior sales & marketing leader from a large local company I talked with recently — who has an atypical awareness of the social media technology space but admits he could care less about building relationships, community or honing his people skills — said it best when I asked why he didn’t invest time using Twitter sending out tweets, blogging or otherwise creating a presence in the social media space. “Because I’m getting sh*t done and I can’t invest my attention or energy there.”