Podcasters' Emporium

CEO blogging has come up twice in conversations this week, and it has been on my mind. The two conversations I had both provided me insights into why executives of organisations might start a blog and then my thoughts headed towards what would make a CEO blog float or sink.

The first conversation came from a manager in my organisation who was floating the idea that our chief executive should start blogging. While not fully formed this manager wanted to have a discussion about how ‘we’ might go about setting up a blog, what it would cost, and what was involved. This person does not operate in the new media space, but was interested in the latest and greatest to impress their boss.

I wondered whether this situation might be like a Titantic crossing the Atlantic, and immediately my mind started to work on evasive actions to ensure that this ship steered clear of any potential blogging icebergs.

The second conversation I had was with a potential new client, a corporate communicator, whose organisation through a restructure has grown from 150-600 people. She was telling me how the old ways of executive communication were becoming logistically impossible, because she no longer has the physical space to bring 600 people into a meeting with the executives every few weeks.

As a social media practitioner and communicator it gave me a unique opportunity to apply new media solutions and discuss strategies for changing the culture from a ‘push’ communication mechanism where staff are effectively ‘spoon fed’, to a ‘pull’ culture where employees are encouraged to seek out the information they need from various communication channels including employee blogs.

These two conversations really got me thinking about the dynamics of blogging, and how effective bloggers make their blogs work, and what things need to be considered before charting your executives on a course for the blogosphere.

If you’ve operated in the social media space for more than 20 minutes, you’ll know that building relationships is just as important as the message you want to deliver. Bloggers starting out will often be dismayed at the lack of interest in their messages, and the low number of hits or subscriptions to their blogs. Over time and by posting information that engage your audience this situation should change.

So what makes a blog interesting and engaging and what external communication traits should you be looking for before you encourage your executives to start blogging.

The first thing that sprang to mind was personable. Effective blogging will start a conversation between the writer and the reader to give them a better understading of the person.

Have you ever had someone try to sell you something? How often do you find yourself thinking about their motives, and whether you’re going to end up getting the hard sell just so they can meet their quota.

It’s the same with blogging, an effective blogger starts a conversation first, and allows you to get to know how they tick.

Think back – if you can – to when a new leader starts. Remember the water-cooler conversations and the probing questions as people spin their take on the new guy. It’s an attempt to gather information in an attempt to eliminate uncertainty about the future. People bring their past experience together and share scenarios in an attempt to reduce tension.

In blogging too, there will be an element of dissonance: maybe around the motive or intention; whether this ‘next big blogging thing’ will succeed or fail, or whether this information can be trusted. There may be other factors in your organisation.

In the same way as your communicator builds trust in person, similar methods should be employed in their blogging to reassure and build trust. This includes being accountable for answering the hard questions and comments that may come back, but we’ll deal with this issue in another post.

Going back to the communications manager interested in her CEO blogging – I am looking at that situation intently to see whether the approach is going to be sustainable and personable. Time will tell whether the blog will materialise and whether it will be effective.

What is clear is that there are many reasons why your organisation needs to venture into blogging, and through this series of posts we’ll explore how you can create a blogging experience for your organisation that is setup to win and be sustainable in the long term.

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