It's Not All About Business, OK?
A lot of CEOs seem to shy away from blogging. And a lot of PR teams keep asking, "Why?" Actually, it's understandable: the head honcho must always represent the entire company, and that's a lot of pressure for a writer. The real question should be: How can a CEO blog by day and still sleep at night?
Enter Tom Glocer, CEO of Thomson Reuters. Glocer is the head of a vast team of top-notch writers, yet he still produces an engaging blog without fear. His secret? He never talks business.
"We are all subject to a lot of official communications these days from companies," Glocer says at Tom Glocer's Blog. "All too often, these are ghost-written passages concocted by overeager PR machines." Well, that doesn't happen in this blog. Glocer alone writes it, and he only writes about "what interests me."
Is it working? Well, a recent two-part report on father/daughter bonding, including his account of their Night at the Museum together, has so far garnered close to 1,000 pageviews. Not bad.
"I imagine much of my audience will be internal at Thomson Reuters," he notes in his intro. But that's OK, too. He's letting the blog determine its audience. "My real aim is to engage in an electronic dialog with whomever [sic] wants to comment on a post or otherwise share their views," he concludes.
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While I agree that some personalization helps engage the audience and is absolutely necessary, that can be overdone. Yes, he touched emotions and thus got lots of comments on his outing with his daughter, but if the blog is full of that, then potential clients may simply find that it is wasting their time, and stop reading. They read the blog to learn something. And with the massive info overload these days, a lot of us are cutting back on what we'll get feeds from or read. (That said, the personal touch is very useful for building rapport with his staff -- different audience; different desires.)
I think e-newsletter specialist Micheal Katz (http://www.bluepenguindevelopment.com/) generally strikes the right balance: He starts with something personal, but then weaves it in to an important message; to something he is trying to teach his readers.
Another element of the blogging world along with the latest means of communication is the question of where to start. The hesitation which often occurs is a result of the fear of the time involved in maintaining blogs etc. Its only once you start that you see the benefit!