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CEO Blogs
Seth Godin has a post up that says CEO’s probably shouldn’t blog. I disagree with him. I think CEOs should blog as a way to supplement the communication they do every day with their employees, customers, partners, and investors. Two really good examples of CEO blogs are Matt Blumberg’s blog and Steve Goldstein’s blog.
If you go read them, you’ll see that they are full of thoughts about each CEO’s business, their market, industry trends, and more. They have an opinion and are interesting reads. Put yourself in the shoes of an employee or a big customer and you can see the value of these blogs.
Seth says blogs work best when they exhibit the following characteristics, which he goes on to say are not standard characteristics of CEOs:
Candor
Urgency
Timeliness
Pithiness
Controversy
For a blog that is seeking a large audience, I think these characteristics are important, but not all blogs need a large audience to be worthwhile. CEO blogs can serve a smaller audience and serve an important purpose.
Plus, I think that great CEOs display Candor, Urgency, and Timeliness in spades. Pithiness and Controversy wouldn’t be on my wish list, but the first three certainly are.
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Posted October 28, 2004 in Venture Capital and TechnologyComments
I think there is great value in a CEO sharing his thoughts, opinions, etc. on all facets of the business on a regular basis. And I agree, candor, timeliness, and urgency are critical. However, in a small(or large) business I don't believe you necessarily want all constituencies (customers, partners, investors, employees) to necessarily have the same access to level of candor or information. Our entire business over here has been how to take the myriad of questions, answers, conversations and, by applying security and process management via a workflow engine, make them re-usable in all sorts of ways for different end users. And they all become re-usable via our search engine. The issue with blogs in business as I see it is they potentially force the executive to self-edit, be careful in the authoring of the content to the extent that they understand that everyone has access. I believe a superior model will be to enable the author to be completely candid in the work, knowing that different readers or viewers only have access to certain content. The key is it has to happen painlessly --- it can't slow down the process of blogging.
Posted by: Alan Warms | Oct 28, 2004 9:50:47 AM
CEO's with something to hide should not blog. Not passing judgement on anybody with opposing posts, but come on kids. It is the scary letigious nature of our society and media elites who do not like blogs. Sure, some are bogus, many really, should re-think their blogs, but it's a free country and blogs are a perfect example of our freedoms. Now everybody can have a voice, even those with just a few readers.
Posted by: Rob Thrasher | Oct 28, 2004 9:55:40 AM
CEOs of public companies won't say anything useful anyway (at least to investors and analysts) because regulation FP.
I think blogs written non-public-company CEOs, like the ones you work with, could be potentially interesting.
I like your blog, VC in NYC. Keep up the good work.
Posted by: Steve Castellano | Oct 28, 2004 8:39:34 PM
As a chief executive who blogs I can argue both sides of the debate, and in fact I did in a recent blog post entitled "To Blog or Not To Blog?" which can be found at http://www.n2growth.com/blog/?p=27
Posted by: Mike Myatt | Jul 28, 2006 2:47:15 AM
As one who has started my CEO blog quite recently, I can clearly see this as a forum to engage various stakeholders in a meaningful conversation and also as a means of self-expression.
It also gives an opportunity to many to interact with the CEO on issues relating to them and this might not be available in the conventional platforms, which are highly sterilized.
Posted by: Badri | Feb 6, 2007 2:33:43 AM
I have very recently started my own CEO blog just this week. I am using it as a channel to communicate with my customers in an open forum . I chose to start a blog because I feel as if I am loosing a direct connection with my customers. Hopefully I will be able to learn from them. Thank you for the post.
Posted by: Chris Stroud | May 18, 2007 5:20:41 PM
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