CEOs need to be social media influencers. Not everyone seems to be on board. | USAEMALL.com

For years, Braden Wallake has posted everything from business lessons to animal pictures on his LinkedIn page. A fateful midweek post on a late-summer day stopped the marketing executive in his tracks.

Wallake shared a teary-eyed selfie with a message about his feelings after laying off staff. Just like that, he was the “Crying CEO.”

“I woke up the next day, texted my marketing person and said, ‘I think I went viral last night,'” said Wallake, whose post has raked in more than 57,000 reactions and 10,000 comments.

Users blasted the HyperSocial CEO as being “manipulative” and displaying “self indulgence.” The photo “would make a great dart board,” another wrote.

Corporate executives and founders like Wallake were sold on the idea that a vibrant social media presence can boost their personal and firm-wide brand awareness. But the reality is less picture-perfect than it’s made out to be.

In many cases, these leaders come off not as relatable but as cringey. And they’re learning the hard way that their digital footprints can even have material business implications.

“There can be real benefits from CEOs being online, but there can also be great risks,” said Ann Mooney Murphy, a Stevens Institute of Technology professor who has studied how company leaders gain social media celebrity status. “One needs to tread carefully.”

The pitfalls of social media usage for business leaders are becoming increasingly clear as more executives take to the platforms. Nearly three-fourths of Fortune 500 chief executives had at least one social media account last year, up from roughly half in 2019, data from Influential Executive showed.

More than seven out of 10 Fortune 100 CEOs with social platforms posted at least once a month in 2024, a 32% increase from the year prior, according to an analysis from communications firm H/Advisors Abernathy released this week. CEOs have flocked in particular to the work-focused social site LinkedIn, where they post three times a month on average.

An active social media presence can help build brand recognition and drive attention from mainstream news outlets, Murphy said. It can also allow executives to develop para-social relationships directly with consumers — something that was once reserved for more-traditional celebrities like actors or athletes, she said.

While company news was king in these posts, H/Advisors Abernathy found executives devoting more social real estate to sharing personal happenings. This softer style of content — examples of which include Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sharing pictures from Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour and Goldman Sachs‘ David Solomon posting details for his DJ sets — can help keep followers engaged, Murphy said.

A subsector has sprouted up around executives’ social media habits, with several businesses offering training programs or consulting services focused on best practices. PayPal made waves in marketing circles earlier this year when it posted a “Head of CEO Content” role, which paid upwards of $300,000 in part to lead social media communications strategy.

But in recent years, a growing list of anecdotes like Wallake’s “Crying CEO” experience show how posting through life can go awry.

Jason Yanowitz boasted on X in October that Blockworks, the crypto company he co-founded, saw “massive growth” and hit “record revenues” in 2025. He also said the company was shuttering its news division and recommended staffers to anyone hiring journalists covering digital currencies.

One user suggested that Yanowitz forgo smiley faces and strike a tone with less “triumphancy” in a post announcing job cuts. Someone else replied that “before jumping into what’s next,” he should “address the real people who were impacted.”

Yanowitz, who declined CNBC’s interview request, later wrote on X that he “should not have mentioned revenue” in the original post.

Around the same time as Yanowitz’s tweet, a social media video featuring Snowflake revenue chief Mike Gannon offered a case study on how these incidents can evolve into real-world crises.

In an Instagram clip viewed millions of times, Gannon told a street interviewer that the data storage firm was slated to rake in $10 billion “in a couple of years.” Shortly after, Snowflake said in a regulatory filing that statements made in the interview were not authorized and that investors “should not rely upon” them. The company declined to make Gannon available for an interview.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has shared visions for his business ventures on social media in between musings about politics and cultural issues. Two years ago, Musk found himself in court defending comments related to business plans made on X, his social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

In several instances, readers have responded directly to executives whose content they find problematic or cringe-inducing. Some, like Ryan Benson, have also mocked the broader trend of business leaders’ attempting to connect directly via social media.

“It’s just disingenuous,” said Benson, 28. “They’re not trying to speak with people the way that maybe an influencer has success in. They’re trying to talk at people to make them think something about their position.”

Executives’ missteps on social media can catalyze discontent from investors, consumers or employees, according to Murphy of the Stevens Institute of Technology. In some situations, she said social media statements could lead to increased regulatory or legal risk for the companies they represent.

Despite the downfalls, corporate leaders who have seen the underbelly of social media don’t regret being online.

HyperSocial’s Wallake said he initially took time away from LinkedIn to let the dust settle and now thinks twice before making a post. But Wallake still recommends other business managers harness social media to grow their brands given the benefits. If someone does bring up his teary picture, Wallake brushes it off.

“If people want to call me the ‘Crying CEO,’ they’re more than welcome to,” Wallake said. “If they actually get to meet me, they’re going to see me smiling way more often than they’re going to see me ever crying.”

When Yehong Zhu, co-founder of media technology startup Zette AI, jumped on a day-in-my-life trend, responders roasted her over perceived laziness. People said she should be “embarrassed” and was “fundamentally useless to society.” One commenter said they were “printing this out and taping it to the wall to remind me every time I catch myself believing in meritocracy.”

Zhu received handwritten hate mail tied to the post sent to her office. But she also noticed a flood of press coverage that included the company’s name and signups to a product waitlist, underscoring the power of publicity — even if it’s negative.

“After there was this huge influx of attention, I realized, you know what, maybe all attention is good attention,” Zhu said. “As long as your name is in their mouth, you’re doing something right.”

Zhu later understood that her post was taken as “rage bait,” a genre of content so infamous that Oxford named it the 2025 word of the year. She’s currently undergoing a social media rebrand and is considering leaning toward controversial posts — with the hope of winning more attention online.

“I was not trying to rage bait,” she said of the original post. “The day that I actually try to rage bait, everybody will be actually enraged.”