Recently I ran into a a great slideshare post on UberCEO that discusses the social media habits of American CEOs.

I suppose you could read this in two ways. You could conclude that because the top 100 CEOs don’t see the importance in social media, then it’s obviously of no use. Or you could read it and conclude (correctly) that these CEOs just don’t see the possibilities of social media. UberCEO is a bit more cynical. They indict the CEOs for being out of touch with the “way their own customers are communicating” for reasons of fear, lack of knowledge, and time constraints.

A lot of people are afraid to get on the social media thoroughfare. If you want to connect with clients, if you want them to understand who you are or what you do, then you can’t just run a commercial on television anymore.

You need to engage your users. If you want evidence just take a look at companies like Woot…or just look at the Barack Obama campaign. Woot and the Obama campaign built their success on the back of social media. Even some grocery stores are jumping on the social media bandwagon with a fare amount of success; Whole Foods, for example, has nearly 1 million followers on Twitter. There are only 35 accounts with more followers. Needless to say, Social Media is powerful. Whether it’s making friends on facebook or using Twitter to convert sales, having a strong social media presence is more important than you can even know. Think about what you could do with 1 million users at your fingertips.

The reality is, if, as a CEO you don’t know how your brand’s new and future users are connecting to each other and, indeed, the brands themselves, you’re going to become irrelevant, and no one wants to be irrelevant. So get with the times! In the words of the famed General Eric Shinseki, “if you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”