Expert says every CEO should use social media. Yes, EVERY.

Most CEOs do not personally participate in social media. Why? They are too busy to Tweet, and have better things to do than to YouTube.

No they don’t, says Shel Holtz, a communication consultant who has for two decades been the leading expert on the use of technology for corporate communication.

CEOs need to “stop making excuses and do what’s right for their customers, employees and shareholders,” Holtz wrote on his blog yesterday.

While for years Holtz acknowledged that social media isn’t right for every chief executive, now he says it’s just too central a medium for CEOs to ignore. CEOs used to refuse to exchange e-mails, eh reminds us. Now they use e-mail—and some use social media—to save time, Holtz says:

Over the course of the last 10 years or so, I’ve interviewed several CEOs who do use social media. They talk about social channels saving them time …. They share experiences of using social media to put down a looming crisis in minutes instead of weeks. They talk about the ability to reach their audiences directly rather than relying on the increasingly unreliable filter of the media. A few of these CEOs expected to accrue these benefits. Most were taken by surprise that social media proved to be a CEO efficiency tool rather than the burden they expected.

Holtz knows social media, and he knows communication. But executive communicators, you know CEOs. Where do you come down on this?

Let us know. —DM