Is it time your chief exec started blogging?

Wednesday, July 07, 2010 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Business advice | Tags: business, entrepreneurs, CEO, blog, David Cameron, risks, marketing, leadership, chief executive, blogging, Enterprise 2.0,

With entrepreneurship firmly back on the agenda, according to Prime Minister David Cameron, and Enterprise 2.0 seeing companies turning to social software to boost business, we ask: is it time to revisit the CEO blog?

There are many good business reasons to be a top dog who blogs – and probably just as many reasons not to. But if you’re thinking of becoming a CEO blogger, here are some key things to consider.

Why blog?
Chief execs, finance directors, MDs, entrepreneurs and other business leaders who blog can be the ‘voice of the company’, but with a human rather than a corporate face. It’s also a chance to get down to the grass-roots level and talk directly to potential clients and actual customers.

There are other potential advantages, too:
• to demonstrate thought leadership about your business sector
• to leverage online tools to achieve a business goal
• to help crystallise your own thinking
• to be a part of the online conversation about your company and industry (which may mean defending your position or asking open questions of others)
• to raise your (or your company’s) profile

Why NOT blog?
Firstly, there are time issues – the most successful blogs are updated regularly and often only become successful after several years.

Secondly, there may be a cultural or generation gap that requires too much of a cultural shift for your CEO. For example, George Colony, The Counterintuitive CEO, notes that:

‘The average age of the world’s top 100 CEOs is 59. This places them in the “typewriter and whiteout generation”.’

10 CEO bloggers to inspire you
We’ve cherry-picked 10 different CEOs and entrepreneurs who blog, and look at their different approaches so you can see which styles work and which might suit you best. See who’s doing it and doing it well in our pick of the best CEO bloggers.

Image: © Paul Downey

And finally…
We’re happy to announce that we’ve just interviewed über-blogger, entrepreneur and marketing thought-leader Seth Godin for Grant Thornton’s My Big Decision series. Don’t miss it by subscribing to the Elevate RSS feed – it will be posted alongside previous My Big Decision interviewees including Chris Anderson, Stephen Dubner and George Davies.