We’ve looked many times at the progress the corporate world is making in adapting a comprehensive social media strategy to raise visibility, connect with new customers and promote a company’s values and objectives. A new study out today shows that we haven’t made as much progress as we’d thought.

According to new research from Grayling PULSE, more than one in five respondents (or 22%) admit their companies have no integrated social media strategy in place to speak of. None. And, of the companies that do have a social media strategy, only 39 per cent say that it is integrated with their broader communications strategy. This is only slightly improved on a study we looked at a few months back that showed 29% of companies have no clear plan for utilizing social media for their corporate strategy.

The situation at the top is not much better. The Grayling study reports that of the 1119 companies to participate in the survey, “globally, only 23 per cent of CEOs participate personally in company social media – via a blog, Twitter or other platform – and 44 per cent of CEOs have no involvement at all in their company’s social media presence.”

We’re tempted to think the low figure is due to the fact that just 7% of respondents come from the relatively more social bastions of North America, which could explain why so few CEOs they found are Tweeting. But then we did look back at another piece of recent research from CEO.com that backs up their findings. That one showed that less than 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs are in any way “social.”

These findings once again point to a worrying sign in the business world. A new digital gap is emerging with social-savvy companies using the latest tools to more effectively reach the public and speed up the flow of good ideas within an organization. The have-nots, we presume, are on their way to rapid extinction.