Auto tycoon Anand Mahindra is No. 3 in the inaugural WorldofCEOs.com ranking of the ‘Top 30 CEOs on Social Media’. Virgin Group chairman Richard Branson is No. 1 followed by Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn.

Interestingly, the Mahindra Group chairman is the only Indian to feature in this global ranking, which recognises CEOs who have taken to social media early. He is followed by Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer.

This is the second time Anand Mahindra has been ranked globally on social media in 2013. In May, his Twitter account was ranked fourth in the ‘Top 25 CEOs to Follow on Twitter’ listing by the ‘CEO Guru’ blog.

WorldofCEOs.com uses media analytics firm Klout’s metric-based measure, Klout Score, to calculate the rankings after looking at followers and engagement across multiple social networks, including Twitter, LinkedIn and CEO blogs.

Mahindra’s Klout score was 81 out of 100, up from 76 earlier. His Twitter handle, @anandmahindra , has over 838,000 followers and he follows nearly 133 people and companies, including Tata Group, Ratan Tata, Karl Slym, Dia Mirza and Aamir Khan. His tweets are known to be very ‘lively accounts with a lot of regional and emerging markets flavour.’

To develop the final list, the Klout score was combined with qualitative factors, such as which CEOs create true value-added content as determined by users.

The value-add by CEOs was measured in terms of originality and positive impact on the corporate world, their industry, and application to their own companies. WorldofCEOs.com favoured CEOs who had actively and consistently contributed to the leadership agenda and to social media over time.

> priyanka.pani@thehindu.co.in