I stumbled across a blog post about choosing the best writer for your company blog, and it got me to think about the emerging trend of CEO bloggers and CEO blogging. The well known CEO blogs tend to do quite well, and it is entertaining to here what the top level execs are thinking in regards to their monolithic brands.

But is having a companies CEO blog really a good thing?

The pros of CEO bloggers

There is something to be said about actually having the CEO of a company take the time to blog on a regular occurrence. If the blogging is unique and genuine it can add a lot of value, credibility, and humanity to a blog and to a brand.

It shows a level of caring and realism, shown in a way that a middle level manager could not replicate even if the messaging was the same.

So there is value, no doubt.

The cons of CEO blogging

What happens in many cases is that a CEO blog simply gets pushed aside. The unfortunately reality is that CEO’s have so much on their plate that blogging will always be an afterthought. Even if they make the time to write blog posts it will not receive the care and attention needed to make the blog a success.

This is the more common situation, as most CEOs have a lot to oversee and fewer managers to ensure that all aspects of the business are running. It is only after a company has reached a certain level that a CEO can really focus on the vision of the company and relationships with the world rather than the day to day operations.

This is why in most situations we heavily recommend that you find someone who is passionate about the company, but in a situation where they have more freedom to build the blog into something worth conversation. The blog ideally should be one of the more important tasks they take on in their job role.

Depends on the situation…

Like always it is very situational, but consider how much time your CEO (or you, if you are a CEO) have to dedicate to your blog before you actually try and launch it.

You would think that one of the first things you figure out before starting a corporate blog would be what some level of expectation of what you will get out of it. However many times an organization will start a blog just because they hear so much about it, or feel that they should because person/org. X Y and Z have one.

Setting goals is a critical part of progressing in life, both in terms of an organization or company but also personally. Blogs are no different. The vast possibilities of a blog make it even more important to be tied closely to a goal. Failure to set a goal is like staring at a blank canvas and simply smearing paint around randomly rather than thinking about what you actually want to create.

By setting a goal (or even goals) it gives you direction in the content, publishing schedule, and methods to develop metrics to measure the success of the blog against that goal. For example an typical goal may be to get feedback from your brand advocates on any new product prototypes, or service offerings. A company could start a blog that just randomly posted what was new, and maybe that would get some readers… but you wouldn’t know if it was being effective or not.

By defining the goal of getting market research and feedback you can see how much valuable information is obtained from the blog, how much word of mouth is generated by those brand advocates who have now become a part of the product development process, and how sales were effected because of it. It also would let you focus on keeping the blog posts focused around product development cycles and releasing valuable information as necessary.

Those subscribed to the blog would be those who were deeply vested and interested in learning more about the product development cycle, and would be ten times more likely to read a post, share it with a friend, respond and offer feedback, or bookmark it for later reference.

Blogs can have several goals, but make sure you define at least one.

In trying to keep a close ear to the ground related to corporate blogging I have several google alerts with related keywords. Through one of those posts I ran across the blog post by Media Vision Blog about the failure of corporate blogs. It is true, way too many blogs that are started by companies often fail. There are plenty of reasons that this is true, lack of vision, lack of time, etc…

The truth is you have to make a commitment, and block out time to develop the blog steadily. If you can’t fit the time for a least one blog post a month then you should really access if blogging is going to be the best use of your resources with in a company. Despite the endless value that a blog has the potential of providing, it does take time and effort to build it to the point to obtain that value. The fact of the matter is that if you can’t create quality content over the span of a year then don’t bother starting a blog. You obviously have other areas of your business that provide and can provide a greater impact.

If it is a matter of finding just a little more time to blog, find ways to automate or increase the ease of blogging. Maybe blogging through writing e-mails is easier than logging into the system and typing it in. Maybe breaking up blogging into a few short periods of writing and brainstorming rather than doing it all at once could help.

Maybe you just want to outline the key points and delegate the writing of the post to someone else with in the organization, or via hiring a professional blogger.

There are plenty of ways to make blogging quicker and easier, but it will take time and effort in order to really build the value in the blog.