Podcasters' Emporium

This series of posts on effective CEO blogging is born out of a number of conversations that have driven me to think about what makes CEO blogging effective, and what reasons you might have to start a CEO blog. In particular I’m looking at the role of CEO blogging for an internal audience.

Putting your own personality into a blog is an essential ingredient, and in the last post I was talking about how you need to be known before you start ‘selling’ your concepts and ideas.

Being able to relate to the person is no good in isolation, and so this is where our CEO blogging journey continues, as we learn to navigate the obstacles to good blogging.

A common misconception about people venturing into new media spaces is that you can use the same style and the same message and somehow – as if by some feat of web 2.0 magic – your message is somehow going to become more palatable, and more readable.

This couldn’t be further from the truth! Blogs are not some magic formula to dress up the same old turgid crap you’ve always dished out to your employees through stagnant emails and lifeless memos.

Telling a great story is equally as important. How many people do you know who are great in a crowd, but when it comes to writing become bureaucratic and perhaps even turgid in their use of language.

Stories appeal to your world view. It’s unlikely that the stories detailing a war conflict are going to be in complete agreement on both sides of the conflict. Likewise you need to pick your audience. For a CEO this means spending time in your employees shoes, understanding where they are coming from and then from that view point.

A good story has energy and enthusiasm. Have you ever tried to convey a story when you’re tired? Have you ever tried and then given up because it’s too hard to get the facts in order, and it’s hard to know where to start? As a blogger and story teller you need to be energetic in your telling of the story so that the message is conveyed.

A good story is fun. Just like if you were telling a story in person, don’t forget the nuances and side comments that make a story engaging and fun for your readers.

Emotion and details in your story allows readers to connect and helps them forge links between your story and the content they need to remember. Think of your facts and figures like a line drawing. Conveying lots of detail and emotion in your story is like putting the colour and shade into your picture.

Characters with depth provide an added layer of interest to your story. The detail about how people react and respond to the story creates an added rich layer of detail to the message you are trying to deliver.

Ira Glass has a really good four-part series on YouTube which explains those qualities which make a good story, and explains how people can tell better stories. We’ve previously featured this article in the Podcasters‘ Emporium.

Seth Godin makes some great points about story-telling in his blog, including this insight:

“The best stories don’t teach people anything new. Instead, the best stories agree with what the audience already believes and makes the members of the audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the first place.”

When you look at blogging from this point of view it becomes quite powerful. Acknowledgement is a powerful tool to align a CEO with their staff. Even though there may not be agreement on the finer points of a solution, an acknowledgement of uncertainly, pain or discontent, is a great aligning tool.

In the communication profession, it’s nearly a global truth that everyone thinks they can communicate until they get into a crisis or they discover that their message isn’t being heard.

Any good sales person knows that you cannot sell to a person until you remove any underlying objections. It’s the same in good communication, those objections or concerns are like a brick wall that will stop your message getting through.

Address the objection, remove the wall, and what you have to say will be heard. I’m going to leave you here on this final point and it’s about blog comments.

So many organisations are used to side-stepping issues and nearly pretending that they don’t exist. These issues create the types of barriers I’ve just been talking about.

Web 2.0 is designed for collaboration and conversation and comments are an excellent tool to gauge whether you are on the mark with what you are writing. Comments also provide executive communicators valuable data on language and a meter on the emotionality of the subjects you choose to talk about.

And to make your life easier as a CEO Blogger, comments make for exceptional idea fodder to inform your future blog posts and for debunking some of the myths that can permeate an organisation especially during times of change.

Subscribe to the blog to get more in this series on Effective CEO blogging, or subscribe to The Podcasters‘ Emporium Podcast for more tips on podcasting and new media use.