Maybe Your CEO Shouldn't Blog

I learn a lot by new questions that come up, then keep coming up. The most recent of them is  "How do I get my CEO to blog?"

My short answer is: "Don't."

First, it is usually unwise and occasionally career-shortening to try to force your CEO to do anything he does not wish to do. Second, with very few exceptions, CEOs do not make the best company bloggers.  Product managers and other people who are passionate and knowledgeable about the details of a product are often better.

CEOs of public companies are hamstrung by security and other regulatory restrictions.  Even if the company is private, the CEO's primary accountability is to investors.  A product manager, on the other hand, is mostly loyal to his or her product and accountable to customers. The CEO's future is tied to company growth and profits.  The product manager's is often tied to happy customers.

Product managers also speak in a language closer to everyday people.  While their are many exceptions, most CEOs are fluent in corpspeak a language most of us neither trust nor understand.

The bottom line:  CEOs should nurture cultures that encourage blogging. They should encourage the open culture and using blogs to get closer with customers.

Let them spend what little spare time they have with their families or playing golf.

Comments

[Jane Genova]

This is the best discussion of CEO blogging that I've encountered. Many in my field of communications are pushing CEOs into this arena and, as you say, they don't want to go there. Nor, should they. Product folks and customer services folks have the information to make the connection through blogging.

Where the CEOs might want to blog, however, is in a password-protected blog with special niche audiences such as institutional investors, top-tier media, employees or vendors. Usually very little leaks from these sorts of private blogs. And those with the password feel "special."

[Sheri]

You are so right about CEO's and upper level management. They don't have time.

[Alexandra Pullin]

I don't think anyone can say that certain people CAN'T blog - the joy of blogs is that anyone can do it. If CEOs want to blog let them, if they don't then they don't have to, after all forcing someone to blog will mean that the blog - which is tied to the company - will suffer and be rather inadequate. Which won't reflect well on the company.

[Rich Dudley]

When I think of all the CEOs I know (including my dad), all I think of is Trillian's line from the HHGTTG movie: "Buttons are not toys".

Bob Norton, former CEO of FTD, tried to participate in the member forums, and he tended to not leave a favorable impression of himself, which reflected on the company as a whole. It eroded member's confidence in the organization. Someone in IT should have replaced his keyboard with a Speak-n-Spell early on so he could hear how dumb some of his remarks sounded. I'd hate to think of what he would have done if blogs had been around back then.

[Bill Brown]

Counterpoint: Bob Parsons.

http://www.bobparsons.com/

[Shel Israel]

Bob,

No counterpoint at all. My argument is against trying to frce your CEO--or anyone else--to blog. I clearly stated "with few exceptions," and GoDaddy's daddy is one of them. A few days ago, I discussed Toronto's Jim Estill http://jimestill.blogspot.com CEO of Synnex Canada, who is also a great blogger.But worldwide, there is less than a dozen superior CEO bloggers. There are probably thousands of great blogging product managers.

[Tom]

Shel: You are so right. It also seems like a lot of CEOs are blogging just to be a part of the new crowd and seem like they get it. And some other blog to just build up the hype. Both these categories give up soon, I feel, for the lack of time firstly, and secondly becuase the stop seeing the consistenty in the hype created by them blogging (sometimes randomly about their personal life). Riya CEO blog is a good one here. It seems like you are consultant to Riya, but looking the its CEO blog a range of details to hype the company in the last few months and then it suddenly stopped (after the acquisition attempts fell through I guess) and they went it for more money. Its strange how bloggers don't feel responsible.

So like you say, don't blog, if you don't like to and don't blog if you don't have anything worthwhile to share with your audience.

[Marilee Veniegas]

CEO's are always on the go. I tried to get our CEO at Essential Security Software (http://www.essentialsecurity.com), Ray Zambroski to do a travel blog "On the Road with Ray," as he did a cross-country tour promoting our email and document security tool Essential Taceo(TM).

After some very rummy team emails from San Francisco to NYC, I'm actually glad he decided against going the Biz Stone(http://bizstone.com/) route.

C'est La Vie - I'll ask my CEO to blog again when we have our Taceo 2.0 launch. I still think there's value in sharing these raw types of experiences, even if it is just "I had bacon and toast before running off to have a chat with Business 2.0..."

--Marilee Veniegas
http://www.iwanmyess.com

[Jim Estill]

As a CEO who blogs, I cannot say we should not. As for the danger of releasing inside information, trade secrets etc - how did the CEO get to be CEO? Surely they know enough.

No one should want anyone else to blog. It is enough to keep up a blog is you are motivated to do it yourself.

The beauty of blogs is anyone can and there are no shoulds about who can or should.

[Andy Beal]

I agree whole heartedly with Jim.

Shel, you claimed I misrepresented you in my blog post. I'd be happy to clarify your thoughts for my readers. Are you saying that, in general, CEOs should not be allowed to blog?

Your title is "Maybe Your CEO Shouldn't Blog"; your short answer is "Don't"; and your "bottom line" does not mention anything that would have us believe CEOs should blog.

I hope you can see how your post sends a message to CEOs that they shouldn't blog, at precisely time the general public is looking for honesty, accessability and accountability from CEOs.

I would appreciate your thoughts.