Adding Your Voice to the Conversation. Why CEOs Should Blog
Posted by Administrator on September 19th, 2005
By Jeneane D. Sessum, The Content Factor | Allied, Content Factor Weblog
EDITORS’ CHOICE | CEO Blogs
Just how taxing is it to be one of today’s chief executive officers? Most are on call, in one form or another, nearly 24 hours a day. According to an article in the Pocket Manager, it’s difficult to determine precisely how many hours the typical CEO works, but research shows that U.S.- and U.K.-based chief executive officers work the longest hours. While Oracle’s Larry Ellison has attempted to cut back on his 80-hour work week, most CEOs ether haven’t mastered the technique or don’t have that luxury.
So why in the world would CEOs take on the extra task of blogging—a communication medium with a tentative ROI that remains largely unproven?
Marketing pundit and best-selling author Seth Godin says they shouldn’t. According to Godin, blogs work when they are based on candor, urgency, timeliness, pithiness, and controversy. “Does this sound like a CEO to you?� Godin asks. “Short and sweet, folks: If you can’t be at least four of the five things listed above, please don’t bother . . . save the fluff for the annual report.�
As blogging evolves, however, many of today’s CEOs-turned-bloggers in fact are making the time—and having a good time—using the very characteristics Godin lists as what makes blogging successful.
Time to Blog?
Bob Cramer, CEO of Marlborough, Mass.-based LiveVault, sees blogging not as an extra activity, but as something inherent to his business.
“The essence of our business is leveraging the Internet to transform how organizations run the process of data backup,� he says. “Since our business model is based around the net, blogging is a natural fit for us.� Cramer, who uses Six Apart’s Movable Type blog tool, manages the time demands of blogging by loosely scheduling time for writing.
“I aim for one blog entry a week at a minimum, and while I don’t formally schedule my posts, I do put blogging on my to-do list,� he says. “When I get the RSS feeds from blogs I read and I see a topic that interests me, I’ll take some notes and make the time to write about it.�
Phil Libin, president of CoreStreet, in Cambridge, Mass., takes a more free-form approach to balancing his blog time with his executive responsibilities.
“In every other facet of the company, I have a schedule,� he says. “There are deadlines; there are reports; there are meetings, and so on. If I tried to extend that schedule to my blog, I wouldn’t bother blogging. If I had to say to myself, ‘Here are ten topics, now sit down and write about them,’ the whole experience would become bland and boring. So instead I post when something intrigues me, when something seems like it will interest my readers. I’d rather have readers remember me for having written something memorable than for when I last posted.�
Gil Friend, CEO of Berkeley, Calif.-based Natural Logic, doesn’t have a regular posting pattern, but does have posting consistency over time, having blogged actively on his Radio blog since June 2002.
“I’ll go through a week or two of not posting, and then I’ll have days when I write five posts, then a single post—it varies,� he says. “I don’t know if that’s a problem for readers. When I started blogging I wasn’t thinking about all of that. It was as much because I like to try new things as anything. But I continue blogging because writing is one of the ways I figure out what I’m thinking. And, what I think and what I write about are often key reasons people engage my company.�
Matt Blumberg, CEO of New York, NY-based Return Path, also uses blogging to help crystallize his thinking.
“One of the best things publishing a blog has done has been to force me to spend a few minutes here and there thinking about issues I encounter in a more structured way and crystallizing my point of view on them,� Blumberg wrote in 2004. “[That’s] invaluable, but mostly for me.�
Unleashing Your Inner Blogger
Getting started in blogging doesn’t always take an edict from on high or a firm resolution to blog. Sometimes it starts by accident. That’s how GM vice chairman Bob Lutz came to blogging, according to marketing consultant Debbie Weil, who learned from Gary Grates, GM’s vice president of communications for North America, that Bob Lutz started writing flying back from Europe when he wrote up a response to some posts he’d been reading about GM.
When Lutz asked what he should do with his notes, Grates had his blog-savvy communications team put his writeup on the Saturn into a blog template. The rest, as they say, is history—at least recent history. Grates says that there is no science to how or when Lutz blogs, but rather that he simply “juxtaposes his response to reader comments with what he wants to write about next.�
Lutz himself gives advice to other CEOs on the whys and wherefores of blogging in his article from the July 11, 2005 issue of Information Week, “Nothing to Fear from Executive Blogging�. “It’s important that we run the bad with the good,� he writes. “We’d take a credibility hit if we posted only rosy compliments, and credibility is the most important attribute a corporate blog can have. Once it’s gone, your blog is meaningless. If you filter the negatives out, you don’t have a true dialogue, so how can you hope to change anybody’s mind about your products or your business?�
Not every high-level executive, however, has a power blogger within, just waiting for the opportunity to engage the market in debate and express himself or herself online. It takes a combination of personality and proficiency, of wit and wisdom, and the ability to write well, to make a blogger—CEO or otherwise—worth reading.
CoreStreet’s Libin was inspired and encouraged into blogging by Chuck Tanowitz of Schwartz Communications, who urged his client to join the blogosphere in 2003.
“What’s right about Phil for blogging is that he’s thoughtful, articulate, well spoken, and a great writer, which translates well to the medium of blogging,� Tanowitz says. “His blog is not just a recap of company press releases and press materials—far from it. What he writes about in his posts are the things that Phil thinks about every day. His passion for the industry, his business smarts, and his personality are really what attracted our firm to the company when we started working with CoreStreet.�
According to Tanowitz, Libin’s enthusiasm for what he does—which comes across in his blog and in person—is something Tanowitz has leveraged for more traditional PR tactics as well.
“As public relations people, when we hear that passion from someone, that’s what we need to capture and take back to the marketplace,� Tanowitz says. “Blogging is the digital pencil. As Phil’s PR counsel, we get a lot of ideas from reading Phil’s blog at times when we’re not in front of him. We get the thoughts he has while he’s traveling in a far-off nation. His blog is a direct line into his head, and what Phil writes on his blog often extends to traditional PR and marketing channels—allowing us to repackage his thoughts on a given topic and bring his ideas to the media in other forms. Often, something Phil’s read or written sparks talks with analysts and journalists.�
For his part, Libin likes the way his blog breaks the ice when meeting prospects, partners, colleagues, candidates, and members of the media for the first time.
“I didn’t think of this when I started blogging, but people usually Google me before a meeting, and by the time I meet with them at least one-quarter of them will have found my blog and read something there that they want to talk about,� he says. “It’s like a shared joke, something more personal that removes the pressure during for those first initial conversations. The basics about who you are have been taken care of on your blog.�
Blogging Is “Complementary To�—Not a “Replacement For�
Natural Logic’s Gil Friend sees blogging as one of many communication pathways for his organization and its constituents. Friend, who has been online since the late 1970s, when he participated in EIES (the Electronic Information Exchange System), one of the early computer communications projects outside DARPA, puts blogging into perspective as a powerful tool for participating in the larger conversation.
“As a CEO, I write, speak and meet, and I see blogging as short-form writing that has its place in how I communicate,� he says. “I do a longer monthly piece called “The New Bottom Line,� regular pieces at WorldChanging (http://www.worldchanging.com) and GreenBiz, as well as articles for traditional media like The Wall Street Journal. Blogging is more informal, and makes it easy to link other relevant items and bring people into the conversation. People can engage at their own pace and at their own convenience. And with RSS and blogrolls, reading blogs becomes even easier.�
The conversation is the point, according to Friend. And the more dimensions to it, the better.
“The conversation happens through blogging and around the water cooler,� he says. “It happens in performance reviews, in the lunchroom, in the boardroom. Extended across the organization’s lifecycle is the defining conversation the company has with itself and its value chain. And every organization has the opportunity to have this conversation, to make it broadly participatory, to make it rich, and to have it in all the forums where it can occur.�
CEO Blogging: Mischief or Management?
Because blogging is a continuously evolving medium, it is unpredictable. The risks of blogging—of being harassed in comments, embarrassed by errors and miscommunication, even being fired—have been well demonstrated in real-life scenarios for a few years now. Blogging’s blemishes are worth examining, but not worth losing sleep over, according to executive bloggers with a passion for posting. With unpredictability comes risk, but it also brings edginess and excitement that connects with readers.
“Our executive team had meetings to decide if we should do it, how we should do it, and who should do it,� says LiveVault’s Bob Cramer. “We weighed the potential problems against the possible opportunities. In the end, we decided that the worst-case scenario was that we would learn from it. So we jumped in.�
According to Cramer, the biggest risk for new executive bloggers is that they may expect too much from it.
“Blogging is about expressing yourself and how you feel—whether it’s your market, industry trends, current events, or some other topic,� he says. “It’s not about selling product or writing a sales pitch. While I would urge every CEO to blog, I would also urge them to write about things they know about, to be personal, to understand that this is not your ‘company’ speaking—it’s you speaking.�
What about encouraging employees to follow in his footsteps? Cramer says the more the merrier, as long as the work gets done.
“I think it would be great if our employees decided to blog, if they want to spend extra time conveying how they think and feel to the community.�
Karen Christensen, CEO of Great Barrington, Mass.-based Berkshire Publishing Group, has identified the risks associated with blog publishing—and has some advice for overcoming them.
“Blogging requires consistency, which is why it’s a good idea to test the waters without making an announcement or commitment before you find out if it’s for you,� she says. “It’s not a blog if the last entry is a month old, so before you draw a lot of attention to your blog, make sure you can really do it.�
Christensen also advises CEO bloggers to get personal while understanding that a certain level of decorum is necessary.
“We should be as relaxed and uncensored as we can, but also be aware that there are risks in publishing on the fly,� she notes. “For example, I try not to share my wilder dreams and visions on the blog. And if you are one of those people who can’t spell or see typos in your writing, get a proofreader or editor.�
CoreStreet’s Libin, who views his blog as a personal site, separate from his company, does not use corporate resources of any kind to design, host, maintain, or post to his blog. He also makes sure his blog has a separate graphical identity, saying that “this separation of church and state� gives him freedom to keep things humorous and fresh—and keep him engaged in writing there. Of course, that freedom of expression also brings some—you guessed it—risks.
“From an HR perspective, it’s a personal blog, but I have to be appropriate,� he says. “That’s a little tricky, because it’s easy to have what you write be misunderstood. Also, I find myself writing some humorous posts and I think, ‘Do I want my investors to think that I’m funny? Does that make me frivolous? Is there a difference?’ The truth is, yes there’s a difference—and being funny and interesting is not a bad thing.�
A little fear, in fact, may be a good thing, according to Natural Logic’s Gil Friend, who notes that there’s nothing wrong with fear.
“Fear is part of awareness,� he explains. “Blind courage gets large numbers of people killed. So, be afraid and go ahead with the risks in mind.�
Friend sees the opportunities for executive bloggers to develop a voice that customers, employees, and other stakeholders can relate to as an important benefit of blogging.
“Giving a voice to what can be a monolith is important because people do business out of relationships as much as they do it out of price, performance, and benefit,� he says. “Blogging facilitates a dialogue about what matters to companies and communities—a discussion that often leads to a working relationship.�
Because a key job for CEOs is to provide the core of the organization’s identity and to ensure sustainability, a vital component of corporate identity is cohesiveness.
“One way that that the corporate voice can emerge is through blogging,� he says. “The most interesting and powerful companies in the world are the ones who have dismantled that dichotomy between inside and outside, companies who speak with the same voice—internally, externally, and to themselves.�
The Cost Is Low, The ROI Is Coming
What is the return on investment for developing an identifiable, sustainable corporate voice? Even the most enthusiastic CEO bloggers will admit that they have yet to figure that out.
“In terms of ROI, I don’t know what dollar value you can place on having people know me, know CoreStreet, and understand our values before we ever walk into a meeting,� Phil Libin says. “But considering the number of meetings I attend, it could be pretty huge.�
Libin advises, however, that blogging isn’t for every executive.
“I would recommend blogging, but it depends on whether or not you have anything to say,� he explains. “Blogging is not the only way to move the conversation forward. If you’re good at golf, you have the golf course, but unfortunately I’m not. Blogging is my golf game.�
Berkshire Group’s Karen Christensen says all the ROI she needs to see is a positive response about her blog from her customers.
“Our customers are librarians and book distributors, and they have told me that they appreciate getting to know what goes on inside a publishing company,� she explains. “Publishers typically have something of a castle drawbridge mentality. They send out information in polished, finished form, then pull the bridge up. The whole open-access movement is putting them under pressure to be more collaborative, and blogging is our chance to show our approach.�
Blogs Power Convergence
If a fundamental job of a CEO is to be thinking ahead, can blogs help make that job easier? Is there a role in blogging for helping companies determine what the business wants to be not only in five years, but in 25 years?
“There are companies in Japan that have 500-year plans,� Gil Friend says. “Because our business is about the intersection of economic and environmental sustainability, we ask our clients to tell the truth about what they aspire to. We ask them, ‘What’s your organization’s purpose? What are your long-term commitment to your shareholders and employees and community? What’s in your own heart? What are you really here to do?’ And we ask this of CEOs, of senior executives, of everyone within the corporation. Typically, they say: ‘Do you mean in my job? In my life? In my family? In my community?’ And eventually they realize: ‘Oh, you mean all of that?’—and then they get very quiet, and drop into authenticity. What follows is deep and genuine, and it is an extremely powerful conversation.�
Friend and his company have seen first hand the tangible benefits that occur when the CEO and the company’s mission, vision, business model, and value proposition are aligned. And, according to Friend, blogging can play a role in facilitating this authentic convergence.
“Providing multifaceted forums for participation and conversation enables more people within global organizations and communities to emerge and participate in ways that work for them. Blogging is just one way to facilitate this important goal—but it can be a powerful way.�
Perhaps it’s GM’s Bob Lutz’ words of encouragement for executives considering whether or not to blog that will convince the more hesitant business leaders to get to their keyboard especially since the blog world, the press, and most of GM’s constituents are tuned into Lutz’s blog—which, he says, gets more than 5,000 visits and 13,000 page views a day.
“To any senior executive on the fence about starting a corporate blog, I have a word of advice,� Lutz says. “Jump.�
Blogging Resources
The following list of blogging resources will help you learn more about blogging.
About the Blogosphere
- Dave Sifry, CEO of Technorati - The Growth of Blogs, March 2005
- CorporateBlogging.info - Why Blog?
- The New PR Wiki - CEOs who are blogging, by country
Business Blogging Policies and Guidelines
- General Motors - General Motors Blogging Code of Ethics
- IBM - IBM’s blogging guidelines
- Yahoo - Yahoo’s Personal Blog Guidelines [PDF]
- Hill & Knowlton - H&K’s blogging policies and guidelines
- Plaxo - Plaxo’s Public Internet Communications Policy
- Ray Ozzie (formerly of Groove Network) - The blogworld’s first blogging policies were introduced by Groove Networks (now owned by Microsoft, where Ozzie is now CTO)
- Feedster - Feedster’s corporate blogging policy
- San Francisco Chronicle - Writing the Codes on Blogs—Companies Figure Out What’s Okay and What’s Not
- Sun Microsystems - Sun’s policy on public discourse
Powerful Voices
- Doc Searls - Respected blogger, technologist, Linux expert, and cultural commentator. Cluetrain Manifesto co-author
- Burningbird - No stranger to controversy, Shelly Powers is a technologist, artisan, and early blogging pioneer
- Lisa Williams - Great information on blogging, RSS, and life
- David Weinberger - Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization, Cluetrain Manifesto co-author
- Mena Trott - Blog tool pioneer, co-founder, and president of Six Apart
Executive Voices
- Bob Cramer’s Blog - CEO, LiveVault
- Karen Christensen- CEO, Berkshire Publishing
- Gil Friend - CEO, Natural Logic
- Phil Libin - President, CoreStreet
- Matt Blumberg - CEO, Return Path
- Christopher Locke - Highbeam’s (and the blogosphere’s first named) Chief Blogging Officer (CBO) and Cluetrain Manifesto co-author. Popular, often irreverent and offbeat.
- Bob Lutz - GM vice chairman’s blog on the auto industry and related topics, called GM FastLane
- Jonathan Schwartz - Sun’s president and CEO Jonathan Schwartz has become well known for his musings on industry trends, Sun’s strategy, and criticisms of its rivals
- Blog Maverick - Home of Mark Cuban, outspoken owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks
About the Author
Jeneane Sessum is partner and senior writer at The Content Factor, a group of communications professionals that create original content on behalf of their clients. A veteran public relations and marketing writer, Jeneane has been blogging since 2001. She founded Blog Sisters (www.blogsisters.com), a 100-member group blog that was featured as the go-to woman’s weblog in Time Magaine’s 2004 Person of the Year issue. She also maintains a personal blog, Allied (http://allied.blogspot.com), and a corporate blog for The Content Factor (http://contentfactor.blogspot.com). She can be reached via email at jsessum@contentfactor.com.
{tags: prblogweek, pr, public+relations, CEO, blogs, CEO+blogs, business+blogging}
September 20th, 2005 at 12:28 am
Fine article. It suggests one thought: If I worked for a company with a 500-year plan, or even a 15-year plan, I’d be wanting to read the company’s blog - not the ceo’s, but something somehow writing itself that captured not Mr. Honcho’s walleyed or not view, but the dynamism of the enterprise itself.
September 20th, 2005 at 12:47 am
Tom–agreed, but won’t it be interesting to see what happens when, say, high-profile, CEO (and even non-CEO) bloggers retire, leave, quit, vanish, or remain until death do they part. What happens when Scoble retires, or decides to take one of the many offers he gets? Does Microsoft “Scobleize” some other evangelist? Does Scoble evengelize some other product (No, I meant I really love you honey), and how will that resonate over time… Should be fun to see.
As for the corporate group blog that can sustain itself across the 500-year plan, I’m all for that too. But my assignment for this venue was CEOs, and I think part of their responsibilities is having a personality. The ones who are lucky enough to have said item should be blogging.
September 20th, 2005 at 3:40 am
[…] I was very flattered that Jeneane included me in the Powerful Voices section of her great article, Why CEOs Should Blog. As a service to her visitors, I’ve collected my Greatest Hits on the practice of blogging. That’ll work for the visitors — but I know what I owe Jeneane is an entry that will raise the hair on the back of your neck. Ho ho, I’ve got a good one. Watch this space. […]
September 20th, 2005 at 11:36 am
CEO should be the citizens of the whole wide world because free thriving societies are the happiest - as Jay Rosen rightly pointed out: “A blog, you see, is a little First Amendment machine.”
The phrase The Long Tail was first coined by Chris Anderson in a 2004 Wired Magazine article to describe certain business and economic models such as Amazon.com or Netflix. A former Amazon employee described the Long Tail as follows: “We sold more books today that didn’t sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday.â€? Hugh Hewitt says, the tail of the Blogosphere is a concept that the mainstream media simply does not understand. “They’ve never worried about the tail, ever. And now they’ve got the tail just eating them, all day, 24/7.” Long Tail in publishing is larger than the Dragon head
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant — all great CEOs encourage transparency and openness as long as sensitive data is not leakedâ€? Naked Conversations: Shel Israel and Robert Scoble
CODA: Deep Blog
September 20th, 2005 at 3:25 pm
Internal blogging is just as important as external blogging, maybe more so. An internal blog not only keeps everyone in the loop about what’s happening with the company (particularly those employees who have more of a supporting role, like IT and accounting), it also reinforces the CEO’s vision for the company on a regular basis. The more the CEO is able to communicate his passion and his goals, the more buy-in he’s going to get from his (or her) crew.
September 20th, 2005 at 4:03 pm
Jeneane,
Great article well researched with a lot of good links.
There are benefits to blogging, but specifically if sales leads are something CEO’s want to develop, then blogging as it intersects with search engines can produce additional leads. Pay per click advertising can cost into the thousands of dollars per month per word. Getting a high ranking on a search engine for a particular keyword is a cheaper alternative that may actually get you more traffic and leads.
Customer’s increasingly don’t trust companies, and are turned off by advertising; instead customers are turn to their colleagues, friends and contacts for advice about which vendors to pick. The web gives customers the power to interact with their fellow customers online and compare opinions across a whole community. While once customers respected journalists as a credible source for information, now customers use the power of online communities to search for credible answers to their questions about vendors from an entire community of customers online.
If a company is successful in joining into conversation with influential customers online, the benefits of blogging will be positive word of mouth promotion and additional direct traffic and links. Those links will help to boost a company’s rankings in search engines, resulting in more traffic and leads. By following a strategy of customer engagement with online customer communities a company can actually produce sales leads.
Based on my experience with several interviews with several General Motor’s customer, if as Seth Godin suggests CEO’s don’t have time to blog, a company should at the very least make sure their blog follows up with customers. See my article on two interviews with two GM customers, and my suggestions for avoiding negative customer perceptions.
http://blogsurvey.backbonemedia.com/archives/2005/09/the_gm_blog_les.html
John
September 20th, 2005 at 10:18 pm
It beats working
Jeneane Sessum has written a great article for PR Blog Week 2.0 called, Adding Your Voice to the Conversation. Why CEOs Should Blog. It makes me out to be much smarter than I really am! What fun.
September 20th, 2005 at 11:08 pm
Blogging about work and business are very touchy things.
There are multiple audiences that a CEO (or any executive) must address. Staff, vendors, customers, and the media all read statements differently even when the same words are used.
Motivating an employee and garnering the interest of a customer often require different techniques and positions. An executive blog will be hard pressed to meet all the varied needs and not cause harm in some quarter.
Removing every weblog tidbit that could cause an issue leads to bland marketing-speak posts about nothing.
Yes, Mark Cuban can get away with it becasue he’s his own boss and a billionaire. Most executives are much more accountable to others than the few you list above.
Unfortunately to the blogosphere crowd, equipped with their sole hammer (weblogs) everything looks like a nail.
I’m all for personal weblogs for execs that humanize them, but I don’t see tremendous value in public company weblogs which end up dissected and fisked by netizens. All it will take is one lawsuit against a CEO blog posting by shareholders claiming that she/he hurt the company and weblogs will vanish quicker than a snowball in summer.
September 21st, 2005 at 12:12 am
The trick, Michael, is for them not to blog from their business card title. That’s a starter. Yes they have a business card. Yes it says CEO, but the blog does not have to read like a business plan or act as a sarbanes-oxley compliance mechanism for transparency.
They just have to be human. As Bob Cramer said in this article:
“Blogging is about expressing yourself and how you feel—whether it’s your market, industry trends, current events, or some other topic,� he says. “It’s not about selling product or writing a sales pitch. While I would urge every CEO to blog, I would also urge them to write about things they know about, to be personal, to understand that this is not your ‘company’ speaking—it’s you speaking.�
Thats how it not just can work, but is working.
See also Scoble on ROI today:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/09/20.html#a11198
September 21st, 2005 at 4:48 am
I think we sometimes look at blogs as the whole, but they’re not. They’re just part of a much larger puzzle and it’s up to each company to decide where they fit in. In our case the blog fits in as part of a thought leadership message, a component of the overall media relations campaign.
To continue Michael’s metaphor from above, blogs aren’t the hammer, blogs just one of many fasteners. Maybe a nail, maybe a metal clamp, maybe a screw or a bolt. What is it you need?
Phil Libin was CoreStreet’s spokesperson long before becoming a blogger. His voice and thoughts were already out there, this was just another way to extend that role.
Maybe the question isn’t “should CEOs blog,” but “should your corporate spokesperson be blogging?”
Or my favorite question “what is it your company needs to be saying and what is the best way to say it?”
September 21st, 2005 at 7:29 am
[…] Extensive, linkalicious white paper on CEO blogging here. Part of Global PR Blog Week, 2.0. […]
September 21st, 2005 at 9:30 am
A wealth of knowledge to share
If you’re in the communication business and haven’t visited Global PR Blog Week 2.0 yet, I urge you to rush over there right now and dive in to an outstanding professional development event. We’re half-way through the week-long online conference
September 21st, 2005 at 9:21 pm
Jeneane,
I still maintain it’s not that simple.
If an executive speaks about their business on a blog, it affects the business. Commenting on a trend can wreck the negotiations that is going on in one part of the business where they are hammering for a better deal. Or the comment can be used by someone as an endorsement by the company they represent and not the individual.
As one of those poor souls that actually has to sign Sarbanes Oxley documents, I am painful aware of the repercussions of affecting the business performance which could be seen as ‘manipulation’ of public opinion.
I agree that CEOs might enjoy and benefit from a private weblog, but I don’t agree there is tremendous benefit to a public weblog. It might be useful to explain a situation in human terms on occasion, but significant ROI?
Robert Scoble is basically paid to blog, a fun marketing ploy, but nonetheless a marketing ploy. CEOs are paid to make decisions. Turning them into marketing fodder runs a very high risk.
Look what happened to the founder of Godaddy when he expressed his actual feelings on current events. Is this what you are really recommending? If it’s not the true feelings of the exec, then how is it different than the typical marketing hype?
September 22nd, 2005 at 1:32 am
Michael, you limit the imagination of many CEOs who quite understand how to handle themselves in public, on the record, and online. And if you ask Robert Scoble, he will tell you something quite different from that as well–but I would leave that to him.
I don’t think I hyped the benefits in this article; in fact, that’s why I chose to let executives tell their own stories. I also chose to take the converse of the Why CEOs Shouldn’t Blog side of the fence.
How is it different than typical marketing hype? Well, I suppose that depends upon who is doing the hyping.
September 22nd, 2005 at 7:15 pm
Michael,
I think Chuck Tanowitz’s post on his blog on Bob Lutz provides a good example of what Jeneane is aiming for when she talks about revealing a CEO’s personality.
Thought Michael, I think you are right to express some concerns, maybe the issue is to think of strategies to avoid such negative PR events happening, and also how does a company respond?
John Cass
September 22nd, 2005 at 10:44 pm
Excellent article, Jeneane. Good show!
As a CEO who maintains a blog — “Strategic Guy” Blog — it is incredibly difficult to carve time out of an already hectic schedule to provide content that Strategic Communications Group’s (Strategic) key audiences will find of value.
However, my responsibility and commitment to the organization is to serve and support the needs of clients, employees and shareholders. I’ve found my “Strategic Guy” blog an excellent vehicle to share insight, promote thought leadership and solicit opinions.
It’s well worth the time!
September 23rd, 2005 at 1:31 am
Jeneane - An excellent and balanced article that we’ll share with our CEOs. There’s no doubt that the CEO of a public company has to walk a finer line that the CEO of a privately held. But that applies when the CEO is speaking with reporters as well, and at least the blogging CEO can review his/her writing before hitting “publish.” It’s hard to rewind an interview.
September 23rd, 2005 at 4:32 am
[…] Adding Your Voice to the Conversation. Why CEOs Should Blog Because blogging is a continuously evolving medium, it is unpredictable. The risks of blogging—of being harassed in comments, embarrassed by errors and miscommunication, even being fired—have been well demonstrated in real-life scenarios for a few years now. Blogging’s blemishes are worth examining, but not worth losing sleep over, according to executive bloggers with a passion for posting. With unpredictability comes risk, but it also brings edginess and excitement that connects with readers. […]
September 28th, 2005 at 1:12 pm
[…] An article by Jeneane Sessum: […]
September 28th, 2005 at 10:08 pm
[…] Abgeleitet aus den Diskussionen zur “Deutschen Blogparade 7” etwas zur Frage, warum eigentlich Vorstände von deutschen Großunternehmen bloggen oder eben nicht bloggen sollten. Ich persönlich hege überhaupt keinen Zweifel, daß es früher oder später prominente Beispiele geben wird. Wobei ich keine Ahnung habe, wie “gut” das Blog dann sein wird. Doch auf Global PR Week finden sich zwei wunderschöne Artikel, die sehr ausgewogen das Thema behandeln. Schon alleine an der Ausgewogenheit sieht man aber, daß es nicht so eindeutig ist, wie die eine oder andere Seite denken mag. Sprich: Es spricht einiges dagegen und einiges dafür. Letztlich kann man daraus CEO Blogs Chancen einräumen. Adding Your Voice to the Conversation. Why CEOs Should Blog: Beinhaltet zahlreiche Aussagen von CEO Bloggern, was es ihnen bringt, wo aber auch die Schwierigkeiten liegen. […]
October 17th, 2005 at 8:14 pm
My counsel is most often that CEO’s shouldn’t blog, especially those who are chief executive of a public company.
CEOs are the personification of the companies they run and the stakeholders interests the company exists to benefit. The CEO is always in this role, whether speaking in the employee lunchroom, on an earnings call, at a trade show, milling around at a chamber cocktail party or through a blog.
Unless he or she tries to do so anonymously, a CEO who blogs does so as the official voice of the company. There’s no way around this. That means everything in the blog is commercial speech, open to interpretation and reaction by investors, unhappy employees and their families, class-action lawyers, competitors and other camp-followers with an agenda that may or may not have the company’s interests at heart.
Any well-written CEO blog will eventually create expectations and demand that the author tell it like it is on relevant stakeholder issues — the movement of the stock, analyst ratings, upcoming product launches, lawsuits, competing products, the guy fired for sexual harassment, trends in the market, rumors and gossip. Because few chief executives would open the company’s hood as a gathering place for the unaccountable masses, the CEO blog by design is destined to fade away or become yet another interactive marketing brochure.
In the post-Enron, Sarbanes-Oxley environment of tell-all-or-else corporate governance, the rank-and-file CEO crowd is unlikely to embrace the idea of creating more transparency than what they already struggle to comply with every day.
October 17th, 2005 at 8:41 pm
Why assume the CEO would have to yammer on about company speak and policy 24-7. What if that’s, say, 10 percent of what he/she blogs about, and the rest is the result of the fact that he or she is an interesting person, who does and believes interesting things? Let him/her start a golf blog. Let him/her blog about gardening. About their mother with alzheimers.
I have always written CEOs should not blog from their business card titles. That doesn’t mean that they DON’T blog about business, but the important part of what happens when any one of us demonstrates that we’re a talking, thinking, funny, interesting human being.
October 18th, 2005 at 1:17 am
Jenenne,
Are we only talking about large public companies? Smaller companies where the founder is the expert or thought leader in the industry will lose a lot, if the founder does not contribute to the online conversation, I’d say its not only okay for a CEO to blog in those circumstances but imperative.
John