“Now, off we go! Going on vacation electronically!”, this is how the message of Herbert Diess, CEO at the car manufacturer VW, posted on LinkedIn shortly before their Italy vacation together with a picture of him and his daugter smiling could be translated. Diess has already earned more than 250,000 followers by such posts on LinkedIn. The CEOs of SAP (Christian Klein), Mercedes-Benz (Ola Källnius) Deutsche Telekom (Timotheus Höttges) or Siemens (Josef Kaeser) all use this new way of communication on the platform to stay in contact with their followers, amounting to just under 600,000 for all of them combined. But what does this way of communicating actually look like? And why is it so successful?
Together with Michael Graßl, research associate at the Chair of Journalism I, Theresa Atzl has now summarized the core results of the study in the current issue of the journal ‘Communicatio Socialis’. "We see that the possibilities offered by social networks, namely to show yourself in a personal and human way, have also reached the highest board levels. Alongside Twitter, LinkedIn in particular has established itself as a central platform for CEOs as so-called Corporate Influencers", says Graßl.
This was the starting point for the study conducted by Theresa Atzl, who started a career in corporate communications after completing her Master's degree. For her project, Atzl analyzed 511 LinkedIn posts (between July 2020 to June 2021) published by 18 DAX CEOs in view of the style of communication, language, success factors and topic area.
Results revealed that the DAX-bosses mainly rely on a personal narrative style and point of view. A total of 62.5 per cent of the posts can be attributed to this strategy that is mainly characterized by showing personal emotions (105 posts), expressing individual opinions (62 posts), saying thanks (61 posts) or congratulating (51 posts). “As regards content, their company ranks first among topics covered; however, slightly less than we would have thought with 27.4 per cent”, says Atzl. Other topics addressed in the posts mainly include corona (13.5 per cent) and climate change (11.4 per cent). Sustainability (6.8 per cent) and digitalization (4.7 per cent) only play a secondary role in the CEOs’ communication behavior.
“Although we often emphasize the chance to share personal insights and make the person behind big decision-making tangible through communication in social networks, the CEOs on LinkedIn communicate more successfully when sharing posts with a professional context. While users on LinkedIn, which happens to be a social network for professional and career topics, occasionally honor glimpses into the private lives of the CEOs, they still prefer information on job-related topics”, Graßl explains the findings.
Alongside the professional content shared, the study found that main factors for successful communication on LinkedIn were the frequency of the posts, working with pictures (mainly selfies), creativity (no sharing of other posts) and weaving personal elements into the posts (feelings, opinions). “Summing up, we can say that the photograph of the vacation in Italy remains an exception, but the communication style is characterized by a personal narrative style that also includes expressing feelings and opinions”, the researchers conclude. “In the future, we are likely to see more CEOs follow the lead of this successful communication strategy.” This also became evident in the rapidly rising number of followers for accounts of CEOs.
The article on the topic and the current issue of the specialist journal “Commubicatio Socialis” is available online at:
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