The corner office isn’t on board yet. If you’ve read Burston-Marsteller’s latest findings from surveying 200 CEOs about social media, you’ll realize that we still have a lot of questions to answer. And whether you’re an internal advocate working hard to build a case for social media, or a professional seeking to advise companies on how to use social media effectively, there are a few things to note about these results.

Only 18% of CEOs have used social media to communicate with stakeholders.

Of those that do, Facebook is dominant, blogs weren’t even on the list (?), and just 19% use Twitter (remember that’s 19% of the original 18%. So about 6 out of 200. Not so much.) Juxtapose that with the fact that 43% of those surveyed use social media personally  at least a few times a week, so I’m curious about what tools they’re using.

What does that mean? First off, bleeding edge tools aren’t even on the radar. Mainstream rules. But what’s even more compelling is the fact that only one in five are using social media for their business. At all. Even if they use it personally, it’s not bridging the gap between personal and business use. Which means we are still in the very, very early stages of this being a widely accepted business practice.

29% say that they believe social media is very effective for business, 43% say somewhat, and 29% say it’s not effective at all.

Lots of doubt out there. But what’s really interesting is that we’ve got between 29-43% of these CEOs saying that social media holds at least some potential for their business, but only 18% of them are actually using it to communicate with their stakeholders. Where’s the disconnect?

What does that mean? We need to continue refining the business case. Case studies and real, practical examples are going to move this needle. For the companies in the 18%, we need to be working closely with them to learn what they’re doing and – critically – how they’re defining success. The mainstream adoption of social media will only happen if we steward actionable solutions for business instead of just spouting off about the lofty potential of the space. We have aspirational goals, but we must keep our feet on the ground and realize that ultimate potential is reached in baby steps and by gradually evolving existing business practices. Turning the world on its head just isn’t going to work.

45% of these CEOs say that the main obstacle to social media adoption is that isn’t not relevant to stakeholders. 37% say that it’s losing control of the message.  ROI is up there, but only at about 28%.

The question here is whether social media is irrelevant because their customers aren’t online (a possiblity),  or because these CEOs are perceiving that it’s not relevant because of their own discomfort with it in business application. As for losing control of the message and ROI, these are recurring issues.

What does this mean? Companies need to spend time really tapping into their communities to find out whether and if they’re online, and if they are, what sites and tools they’re using. This is not optional. It’s true that social media just might not be right for some companies, but that determination needs to be made by actually (gasp) talking to customers and asking them (double gasp) about how they’d like to be communicated with.  It’s also clear that 37% or more of these CEOs haven’t gotten the memo that message control is a fallacy, anyway. So how is this an opportunity for social media evangelists to articulate – without fearmongering – how the landscape of communications doesn’t allow for control of a message beyond the gate? Can we find compelling but common-sense methods for demonstrating same?

In a crisis, a whopping 71% of the CEOs think that the company website is the best place to communicate, followed by WOM/”Viral campaigns” (39%), the customer service department (37%) and the company blog (31%).

The consistent conclusion here to me is that these are all mechanisms through which these CEOs are thinking they can best control the message. (The option to select WOM/Viral as a crisis control “mechanism” is a bad move on Burston-Marsteller’s part. In case they haven’t looked, that’s an organic process, not something you manufacture, as much as businesses may want to believe otherwise.). The website, CSR and blog are all originating from the corporate voice.  The reality, however, is what happens after the horse has left the barn.

What does this mean? Aside from the obvious note that companies need to be listening and monitoring what’s being said about them in the first place, we’re back to doing a lot of education here. We often tell companies that they can’t control the message, so we need to illustrate that. We need to be listening ourselves, and capturing the examples of “company speak” vs. how that message evolves and tracks across the web. It’s an eye opener for any executive to see where the messaging takes on a life of its own, how people are reacting and responding to it, and how Google decides to treat their press release versus the blog someone wrote.

The bottom line: Our role is first and foremost as educators. But let us not turn that into preaching from the pulpit and getting high off of our own set of key messages (and I fear we’re dangerously close sometimes to doing just that). On the plus side, CEOs are recognizing that word of mouth is influential. What has me wondering is whether or not they truly understand how that word of mouth is generated, and how good a job we’re doing roadmapping that for them. The best teachers get down there and show you how to work out the problem, practically and hands-on.  We live and breathe the altruistic and powerful implications of social media, building intricate relationships with customers, transparency, authenticity.

But these words and terms need definition for the businesses trying to apply them to their work. Not cloud-sniffing definitions, real ones. We can stomp our feet and evangelize the need for more two-way dialogue until we’re blue in the face. But the truth is that if we can’t give these executives handles to hold onto and a clear path to follow, we’ve not done our jobs. Let’s show them, not just tell them. Let’s focus our efforts on making incremental changes that fundamentally shift business practice. Let’s keep our feet on the ground, our eyes on the ball, and put our own work on the line to prove what we so readily preach.

Are you on board?