CEO Blogging: Promises and Pitfalls
From Throwingsheep
Companies are sometimes paranoid about protecting their brand and corporate reputation from the free-wheeling, and frequently negative, opinionating in the blogosphere. But now there is another source of anxiety in many executive suites: what to do when your own CEO starts to keep his/her own blog?
It could be argued that CEOs who blog shrewdly understand the dynamics of Web 2.0 media and are joining the conversation to “get the message out”. A CEO who blogs may also be motivated to create positive optics, and boosts employee morale, by personally conveying that the chief executive is open, candid, and honest. Blogging is also an intelligent way for CEOs to stay in touch with employees, customers, and general trends. A blogging CEO is clearly “plugged in”, not sequestered in a corporate bunker, captive to what a bunch of ass-protecting top execs are telling him/her every day.
Blogging is also a smart way for CEOs to reinforce their legitimacy and manage their leadership profiles through human contact with the people whose support he/she needs to stay in place and execute their strategies. Many top executives now keep Facebook profiles and count thousands of “friends” among employees – thus connecting directly with their employees (former and present) on an informal basis rather than rely on formally bureaucratic forms of communication. Sites like Facebook can be used by CEOs to cut through the clutter of their own bureaucracies and get to the “truth”.
While Fortune 500 companies are doing due diligence on the value of corporate blogs, some trailblazing CEOs have jumped right in as blogging evangelists. There is even a school of management that believes CEO blogging is indispensible. Or as Jonathan Schwartz, president of Sun Microsystems, puts it: “If you want to lead, blog”.
Bill Gates doesn’t blog, neither does Steve Jobs. Still, there’s an impressive, and growing, list of powerful CEOs who are using blogs as management tools. The CEO blogroll includes, besides Schwartz, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Craig Newmark (Craig’s List), Mark Cuban (Dallas Mavericks), Kevin Lynch (Adobe), John Dragoon (Novell), Joe Wikert (Wiley & Son), Matt Blumberg (Return Path), and Richard Charkin (Macmillan Publishers), and billionaire investor Carl Icahn. CEOs who don’t blog risk seeing phony satirical blogs that claim to be written by them. A fake blog called Secret Life of Steve Jobs is kept by Forbes columnist Daniel Lyons. There are also fake blogs for Oracle’s Larry Ellison (called The Fake Larry Ellison Blog) and ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman (called The Secret Diary of Meg Whitman).
There can be no doubt that blogging has gone corporate. In late 2007, a group of major American corporations created a Blog Council, which describes itself as “professional community of top global brands dedicated to promoting best practices in corporate blogging”. Its founding members include Cisco Systems, Coca-Cola, Dell, Gemstar-TV Guide, General Motors, Microsoft, Nokia, SAP, and Wells Fargo.
The blogosphere itself, with some exceptions, has been critical of this Big Business blog organization. Jeff Jarvis, who writes the BuzzMachine blog, castigated the Blog Council for its corporate-sounding name, but also added: “It’s not about them writing blog posts. It as much about them reading everybody else’s blog posts…If they truly realize that we, the customers, are in charge, then that changes the way you comport yourself in this conversation. Again, you listen more than you speak.” Business blogger Dave Taylor was less diplomatic on his Intuitive Systems blog when he described the Blog Council this way: “My translation: ‘We’re all clueless, but don’t want anyone to realize just how unplugged our organizations have become from the world of ‘marketing 2.0’, so we created a club so our ignorance can be shielded from public eyes.”
The debate about the upside and downside of CEO blogging remains unresolved. Marketing strategist Seth Godin warns that CEOs should seriously think twice about blogging. “Here’s the problem,” says Godin. “Blogs work when they are based on: candor, urgency, timeliness, pithiness and controversy (maybe utility if you want six). Does this sound like a CEO to you?” Blogger Dave Taylor agrees: “For companies of any size, CEOs have more important tasks than writing articles for the company weblog. I’m not saying that the entire executive team at a company should stay far, far away from the company blog. Quite the opposite! I applaud companies like Boeing and General Motors for becoming more accessible and gaining visibility in their marketplace by having executives contribute to their blogs. But neither firm has their CEO blogging, let alone a CEO blog. Frankly, their CEOs are just too darn busy with the challenges of running large companies.”
So why do some powerful CEOs, if they’re too busy and have more important things to do, not only bother with the hassle of blogging but also claim it’s an indispensable management tool?
Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz says blogging it’s a matter of corporate survival. “Many senior executives at Sun, including me, have blogs that can be read by anyone, anywhere in the world,” he says. “We discuss everything from business strategy to product development to company values…In ten years, most of us will communicate directly with customers, employees, and the broader business community through blogs. For executives, having a blog is not going to be a matter of choice, any more than using e-mail is today. If you’re not part of the conversation, others will speak on your behalf-and I’m not talking about your employees. Blogging lets you participate in communities you want to cultivate-whether it’s your employees, potential employees, customers, or anyone else-and leverage your corporate culture competitively.”
Bob Lutz, vice-chairman of General Motors, is another convert to executive blogging. He contributes to the company’s FastLane blog and is known as a pro-corporate blogging evangelist. “The key is to leave the corporate-speak behind and keep the tone conversational, open, and honest,” says Lutz. “Anyone who has read our blog sees the real deal, as produced by us and not polished by several layers of trained communications pros. Another aspect that helps keep things real is the wealth of comments posted by readers and other bloggers. We don’t filter out negative comments, complaints, or hate mail. All we do is screen for spam and posts from crackpots using language that most people would find offensive. It's important that we run the bad with the good. 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.”
Is CEO blogging a good idea? We would like to benefit from insights from examples of CEO blogging that works and, of course, examples of what happens when a CEO blog goes terribly wrong.
