How "Cringey" Social Media Posts Could Hurt Your Business

This article, written by Bruce Crumley, was originally published on Inc.com.

As most small business owners already know, developing, refining, and spreading their brands’ messages on social media is a vital, but sometimes tricky marketing strategy. That effort can get even more difficult, however, when bosses thrust themselves front and center of those communications and prove they’re really bad at it in the process.

Recent reports, studies, and surveys may offer entrepreneurs and executives at bigger businesses help in avoiding those displays of counterproductive messaging, and keep their brands’ reputations positive on notoriously unforgiving social media platforms.

As the ranks of influencers, content creators, and second-string public personalities who’ve gained fame and fortune through social media have increased, many business leaders have been tempted to try their hand at it as well. Mark Cuban, Richard Branson, Tim Cook and others have been remarkably successful in that, simultaneously adding luster to their personal brands and their respective companies. But not all executives are as gifted in that particular, more personal form of communicating, and many “come off not as relatable but as cringey,” a CNBC report this week noted.

“(T)hey’re learning the hard way that their digital footprints can even have material business implications,” it said.

By way of example, the business news channel cited the now notorious case of Brad Wallake, CEO of B2B marketing, sales, and network company HyperSocial. Though previously active and relatively successful in his LinkedIn posts, in 2022 Wallake drew more than 57,500 reactions — many scornful or mocking — when he accompanied an announcement that he’d cut his staff with a selfie of himself weeping about it.

Just like that, the “Crying CEO” meme was born — and it wasn’t a positive messaging development for the business or its boss.

There have been other high-profile blow-ups from leaders showing too much personality — and at times swagger — in social media posts. One came last October when crypto company Blockworks co-founder boasted of “record revenues,” along with layoff news, in what became a much-decried post on social platform X.

That network is now synonymous with its owner, Elon Musk. The world’s richest man has generated millions of fans, and arguably even more detractors, with his trademark hyper-personalization and -politicization of his messages — even those ostensibly about his businesses. Musk was even investigated by federal regulators on after posts about taking his Tesla car company private caused its share price to surge.

Musk isn’t the only executive who trod shaky regulatory ground in social media posts. Earlier this year, cloud data firm Snowflake‘s chief revenue officer Mike Gannon boasted in an Instagram video that the business was set to make $10 billion within two years. Gannon called attention to what turned out to be confidential financial information, which forced the company to rush out a statement noting it shouldn’t have gone public — and urging investors to ignore it.

So, should business leaders or top managers stay off social media to avoid similar pratfalls? Not at all, says U.K. C-suite recruiting firm Redline Executive.

“(E)mbracing the power of social media is no longer a nice-to-have but a strategic imperative for CEOs,” Redline director Andy Raymond wrote in a blog post. “The CEO is central to shaping company performance and studies from esteemed resources like Harvard Business Review and others have found that nearly half of a company’s reputation and market value is often attributable to the CEO’s personal brand.”

But how do those leaders take to social platforms without remaining so formal they appear unrelatable, or becoming too personal in ways that could draw hostile responses?

Generally speaking, Redline says that messaging should stick to basic business objectives. Those include increasing the company’s visibility and awareness to outsiders; humanizing its brand through CEO input; demonstrating expertise and thought leadership; and networking directly with employees, customers, potential clients, and the broader public. No need for swagger, politics, or boasting record financial results alongside headcount cuts.

It also doesn’t hurt to have the engaging tone, playful wit, and ready smile of a Cuban or Branson.

Also instructive to business owners is the recently published study, The Power of Posting: An Examination of CEO Social Media Celebrity, by researchers at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. They analyzed the 250,000 messages that 320 CEOs of S&P 1500 companies posted from 2009 to 2021 on what was then Twitter, as well as the 1.6 million replies from platform users those generated.

The study did not provide a full list of leaders who garnered the most positive reputations from their social media activity, though Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff, Red Hat CEO James Whitehurst, and IMB chief Arvind Krishna were among those cited. But it did find common patterns of posting that tended to generate supportive responses, which enhanced their personal reputations as well as those of their businesses.

“(W)e find that the volume, positivity, and variety of CEO posts relate positively to CEO social media celebrity attainment, while the uniqueness of their posts shows no such effect,” the study said. “Social media audiences reward CEOs who show up consistently, positively, and in diverse ways. And these rewards extend well beyond the boundaries of social media, which has been linked to improvements in the reputation of CEOs and their firms as well as for the CEO’s compensation.”

That seems to indicate that rather than seeking the big—and dramatically contrasting—reactions that Cuban, Branson, and Musk generate from their social media posts, most business leaders should have more modest goal of acting as their companies’ human face and voice. In doing so, they should stick to basic communication objectives, using regular messaging on diverse topics to remain fresh and interesting.

And above all, they mustn’t post photos of themselves sobbing.