CEOs want to be social media influencers. Not everyone is on board.

Braden Wallake has been sharing everything from business lessons to animal pictures on his account for years. LinkedIn page. A midweek post late in the summer stopped the marketing executive in his tracks.

Wallake shared a tearful selfie with a message describing his feelings after laying off his staff. That’s right, he “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 received more than 57,000 reactions and 10,000 comments.

Users accused the HyperSocial CEO of being “manipulative” and “self-indulgent.” Another wrote that the photo “would make a great dartboard.”

Company executives and founders like Wallake were struck by the idea that a vibrant social media presence could increase their personal and firmwide brand awareness. But the reality is less perfect than it seems.

In many cases, these leaders come across as embarrassing rather than relatable. And they are learning the hard way that digital footprints can have material business consequences.

“There can be real benefits to CEOs getting online, but there can also be major risks,” said Ann Mooney Murphy, a Stevens Institute of Technology professor who studies how company leaders make profits. social media celebrity status. “It is necessary to tread carefully.”

The pitfalls of using social media for business leaders are becoming increasingly clear as more executives opt for the platforms. Nearly three-quarters of the Fortune 500’s top executives had at least one social media account last year; this figure was approximately half in 2019. Effective Manager showed.

More than seven in 10 Fortune 100 CEOs with social platforms will post at least once a month in 2024, according to an analysis by the communications firm; This was up 32% from the previous year. H/Consultants Abernathy It was published this week. CEOs especially flocked to the business-focused social site LinkedIn, where they post an average of three times a month.

An active social media presence can help build brand awareness and attract the attention of mainstream news outlets, Murphy said. It can also enable managers to develop direct para-social relationships with consumers, he said; this was once something reserved for more traditional celebrities such as actors or athletes.

While these posts feature company news, H/Advisors Abernathy found that executives devoted more social space to sharing personal highlights. This is a softer style of content; examples of these include Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shares photos from Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour and Goldman SachsMurphy said David Solomon posting details of his DJ sets could help keep followers engaged.

A sub-sector has emerged around executives’ social media habits; Many businesses offer training programs or consulting services that focus on best practices. PayPal It made a big impact in marketing circles at the beginning of this year. “CEO Head of Content” The role paid more than $300,000, in part to lead social media communications strategy.

But a growing number of anecdotes in recent years, such as Wallake’s “Crying CEO” experience, show how sharing in life can go wrong.

Jason Yanowitz boasted to X in October that Blockworks, the crypto company he co-founded, was seeing “tremendous growth” and hitting “record revenues” in 2025. He also said the company would shut down its news division and recommended staff to anyone hiring journalists covering digital currencies.

One user suggested Yanowitz ditch the smiley faces in a post announcing the layoffs and speak with a less “triumphal” tone. Another said it “needs to address the actual people affected before moving to the next phase.”

Yanowitz, who declined CNBC’s request for an interview, later wrote to X that he “shouldn’t have mentioned income” in his original post.

Around the same time as Yanowitz’s tweet, here’s a social media video: Snowflake revenue chief Mike Gannon offered a case study of how these events can turn into real-world crises.

One Instagram clip Gannon, who has been viewed millions of times, told a street interviewer that the data storage firm was slated to generate $10 billion in revenue “within a few years.” Shortly thereafter, Snowflake said in a filing with regulators that the statements made in the interview were impermissible and investors “should not rely” on them. The company declined to make Gannon available for an interview.

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

In many cases, readers responded directly to administrators whose content they found problematic or embarrassing. Some, like Ryan Benson, also mocked a broader trend of business leaders seeking to connect directly through social media.

“It’s just hypocrisy,” Benson, 28, said. “They’re not trying to talk to people in the way that an influencer can be successful. They’re trying to talk to people to make them think something about their position.”

Executive missteps on social media can trigger discontent from investors, consumers or employees, according to Murphy of Stevens Institute of Technology. In some cases, social media statements can lead to increased regulatory or legal risks for the companies they represent, he said.

When Yehong Zhu, co-founder of media tech startup Zette AI, jumped into a jump a day in my life trendrespondents angered him for perceived laziness. People said he should be “ashamed” and that he was “fundamentally useless to society.” One commenter said they “printed this out and taped it to the wall to remind me every time I catch myself believing in meritocracy.”

Zhu received handwritten hate mail attached to the mail addressed to his office. But he also noticed numerous press reports featuring the company’s name and product waitlist sign-ups, underscoring the power of publicity, even if negative.

“After such a huge influx of attention, I realized that maybe all the attention is good attention,” Zhu said. “As long as your name is on their lips, you’re doing something right.”

Zhu later realized that her post had been perceived as an “anger trap”; this content was so infamous that Oxford named it the 2025 word of the year. He’s currently going through a rebranding process on social media and is considering branching out into controversial posts in hopes of gaining more traction online.

“I wasn’t trying to tease the bait,” he said of the original post. “The day I really try to swear anger, everyone will be really angry.”