It’s often said that high-powered CEOs are the people with the great vision. They view the big picture, see around corners and can spot a winning gambit from a mile away.
How is it then, that these eagle-eyed captains of industry are seemingly so blind when it comes to the hottest method going for constituency communication? Yep, I’m talking about the blogosphere.
Maybe you’ve heard about it? Technorati recently reported the blogosphere is growing at a staggering rate, doubling in size every 200 days. On average there are about 1.6 million posts each day -- that’s about 67K posts per hour or 18 every minute.
Who’s blogging? Everyone from tweens to parents, boomers to seniors. And they’re often talking about brands and product purchase issues, driving the manna of word-of-mouth buzz that has become a primary influence in how consumers buy most anything.
Blogs are indeed the hotbed of the reference-based communication revolution, shaping consumer attitudes and actions that have the power to build or bring down the mightiest of brands.
And yet conspicuously absent from the blogosphere are the uber stewards of the world’s biggest brands. The NYT reports that only one Fortune 500 CEO is known to actively blog. That’s not a misprint, I said ONE.
For all the posturing around the Internet and new media that corporate executives have made in the last couple of years, they are absent from the dialogue. But are the CEOs really to blame? After all, they do have a business to run and a company to lead. Can you fault them for not having the blogosphere in their immediate field of vision?
That job really belongs to their communication consultants, who should be making the very basic case that executive blogging is good for business. Hard to imagine a better direct-to-consumer channel for the big boss to speak to the people who love, or should love, his/her brand.
The Technorati numbers, coming in such close proximity to the frightening revelation of the NYT piece, should feel like a rush of blood to the head for Corp Comm departments and the agencies that support them.
C’mon, folks. Time to wake up and smell the ether. We’re doing a disservice to our employers/clients if we’re not only advocating for a CEO blog, but making it an ongoing reality for the execs we represent.
As Jonathan Schwartz, the Sun Micro CEO and only guy among Fortune 500 brass who is blogging today, says: For a CEO “having a blog is not going to be a matter of choice, any more than having e-mail is.”
Said another way, it’s the old axiom that “to be perceived as a leader, you need to act like a leader.” High time we get more of our CEOs to act like CEOs in the new digital era.
Comments (2)
I really appreciate your perspective on this issue. In addition to your insights, I view it as another way to personalize and humanize certain CEOs and connect them with their customer base. However, I would implore those considering it to proceed with caution.
As part of our jobs is to manage corporate image and assess risk to that image, it makes me wonder: to what degree do you recommend the communications team involve themselves in the messaging and crafting of such a blog?
Some may view the development of one similar to a corporate speech or press release and therefore under the realm of the communications team.
And yet, because it carries the implication of being more personal and therefore straight from the owner's mouth, so to speak, is it ethical to have someone else other than the owner write it?
And what happens if the visionary CEO lands the company in hot-water because of blogging?
So, while I agree we should hear more from our CEOs, I wonder if the reason we're not hearing more from them is because of the risk it carries?
On that note, can you share how Mr. Schwartz involves his PR team in his blog?
Call me curious.
Thanks.
Posted by Carmella Gutierrez | September 5, 2006 12:32 PM
Posted on September 5, 2006 12:32
A CEO blog may be a great idea if the CEO (1) has something meaningful to say, (2) can do so in an interesting way, (3) is committed to maintaining the blog in the face of other pressing time commitments and (4) he/she knows how to stay away from the many tripwires of Sarbanes-Oxley, Reg FD, etc.
It's often a challenge just to get CEOs to craft the required MD&A section of SEC filings. It is probably unrealistic to expect more than a handful of them to be able to wax eloquent, week in and week out -- a chore many professional journalists can barely manage. Better to be a non-blogger than a clumsy, boring or laughable blogger.
Laughable? Yes. I worked with one tech industry CEO who launched a blog. After a few postings on tech issues, he proceeded to lecture the world on his bizarre and extreme political views.
Posted by Alexander Auerbach | September 7, 2006 9:05 PM
Posted on September 7, 2006 21:05