At the end of 2012, the University of Massachusetts presented their annual survey of the digital presence of the Fortune 500.

Among their findings were the following: 28% of the Fortune 500 companies had blogs, 62% had a YouTube account, and (here’s the shocker) an incredible 23% of Fortune 500 firms had neither a Twitter nor a Facebook account at the end of 2012.

Not only that. As we reported, according to the 2012 Fortune 500 Social CEO Index report from CEO.com, only 19 CEOs from the world’s top 500 companies use Twitter (or have someone use it on their behalf) – and only 9 of these are active.

Like… seriously?

In an attempt to give big companies the benefit of the doubt, the Huffington Post’s Vala Afshar, also the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Chief Customer Officer of Enterasys Networks, took a look at the social media presence of big brands’ CMOs, considering that the word “marketing” is in those bigwigs’ titles. Maybe those guys could redeem their own companies’ fellow chief executives. Below, his findings.

Afshar hunted down the CMOs of the country’s top 250 companies, then located them on social media (if they even existed on those networks).

And?

Less than 20% of the Fortune 250 companies have CMOs on Twitter.

Well, there goes that idea.

Plus, of the 20% of the Fortune 250 CMOs that are on Twitter, more than half are not very social — below average Klout and Kred scores and very infrequent contributions to Twitter. In fact, Afshar notes that the CMO with the most Twitter followers, as well as the highest Klout and Kred scores, had to be excluded from the list of top-tweeting CMOs because he hadn’t tweeted since 2012. Zero tweets in 8 weeks.

Check out the top 20 social CMOs of the Fortune 250 companies in the world, and give them a virtual high-five if you want to reward them for not sucking like some of their industry competitors.

1. Jonathan Becher (@jbecher) — SAP
2. Beth Comstock (@bethcomstock) — General Electric
3. Jon Iwata (@coastw) — IBM
4. Kathy Savitt (@ksavitt) — Yahoo
5. Nikesh Arora (@nikesharora) — Google
6. Karen Quintos (@KarenDellCMO) — Dell
7. Jeffrey Jones (@jjones) — Target
8. Chris Capossela (@chriscapossela) — Microsoft
9. Ken Cohen (@KenPCohen) — Exxon Mobile
10. Jeremy Burton (@jburton) — EMC
11. Christa Carone (@christacarone) — Xerox
12. Blair Christie (@BlairChristie) — Cisco Systems
13. Pam Wickham (@PamWickham1) — Raytheon
14. Seth Farbman (@sethfarbman) — Gap
15. Mark W. Addicks (@MarkAddicks) — General Mills
16. Michael W. Zuna (@mzuna) — Aflac
17. Jeffrey A. Hirsch (@JeffreyAHirsch) — Time Warner Cable
18. Eduardo Conrado (@conradoeduardo) — Motorola Mobility Holdings
19. Anand Chandrasekher (@achandrasekher) — Qualcomm
20. Kimberly Kadlec (@kkadlec17) — Johnson & Johnson

Do you agree that big companies, and their executives, really need to get in social media shape?

(Image via Shutterstock)