CEO's And The Fear Of Corporate Blogging

In Sarah Wurrey's post "Social Media Breakfast 2: Bigger and Better", Sarah "ask's should CEOs be set free on the blogosphere without restraint, or are Larry's thoughts that they're better off keeping their (or their ghostwriter's) mouths shut the way to go?" This post was in response to the boston social media breakfast earlier this month. Where Larry Weber was asked why he did not blog, and he in part answered the question by saying that CEO's should not blog.

My advice to CEO's would be to think carefully before you blog. Often customers don't actually want to talk with you anyway, I've found some of the most effective corporate bloggers are in customer service and product development, the people who talk with customers every day anyway. However I'd never dissuade a CEO from blogging if they had a lot of passion to do that. Zane Safrit from Conference Calls Unlimited is a great example of a CEO who blogs successfully and where blogging has proven to be a boon for his company. Zane has also described to me how he has written a few things without checking with his staff and had to pay the consequences later.

Microsoft suggests, "don't be stupid," as a blogging policy, maybe for CEO's the cautionary should be "think before you post," for blogging.

But really, how is writing a blog post different from other forms of communication, say in a live presentation, or is that the point Larry was making, everything has to be scripted? I think there's more to be gained from a getting involved with your wider community than always being afraid that if you say anything something might go wrong. I do think its up to anyone who uses social media to communicate to educate themselves on some solid guidelines in order to protect themselves from committing gaffes that embarrass themselves and their companies, but I don’t think the fear of making a mistake should stop a CEO from using social media.