A recent post on Richard Sambrook’s blog, SacredFacts, includes a recording for the BBC World Service by Lucy Kellaway, management columnist at the Financial Times. You can find the item here, and should listen to it if the rest of this post is to make sense.
I agree and disagree with Lucy Kellaway on the issues she raises. I agree that 'Best' is a rather meaningless way to sign off an email, though my feelings on the matter are not strong. I disagree that CEOs cannot and should not blog. Here, my feelings are much more profound.
No, we don’t need to know Tom Glocer’s taste in music or that he has a dog called Luna. That stuff is pointless and the man should know better (or at least his PR people should have tipped him off). Here, Lucy is quite right.
Yet her definition of blogging is at best out of date, or otherwise just plain wrong. Yes, the style is usually chatty, but who says a CEO can’t write that way – the title does not preclude conversation? Sure, a bit of controversy into the mix makes the content interesting, but what’s to stop a CEO using a blog to air or confront a point of view. And since when was blogging democratic?
The most important factor in a blog, as Lucy says, is that it is “full of stuff that one wants to read”. I couldn’t agree more, and can’t stress enough that CEOs are full of stuff people want to read. The problem is that most don’t realise this, or if they do, they don’t understand what their audience wants to know. Hence we hear about irrelevancies such as pets and music.
Through a blog, a CEO has a rare – perhaps unique – opportunity to enter into a dialogue with customers, prospects, shareholders, staff, and the wider world. The topics at issue should relate only to the business or brand for which he or she is responsible and must be relevant to the blog’s target audience at all times. This may mean the subject matter becomes very narrow. Great! A good CEO blog should never be an online scrap book of assorted thoughts and ideas; music and pets should only feature if you run a record label or pet store.
By sticking to the point, raising and debating matters of interest to the audience, making use of the built-in capability for interactive communication, and combining this with other elements in a marketing strategy, both digital and traditional, a blog can be a tool that wins business, solves problems and even saves a company altogether.
Don’t believe me? I refer back to a previous post about Unicorn Darts. Custodian of a staunchly British brand, yet facing a critical business need to cut manufacturing costs, the firm’s managing director knew that moving production out of the UK was the only way to save the company. Of course, customers had other views, which they readily expressed on blogs and message boards. While most execs might have battled through this like flak and relied upon traditional marketing techniques to attempt to win the argument, Ed Lowy chose to engage with them directly. Read the post to learn of the positive and long term effect this has on his business.
With our media environment fracturing and changing almost day by day, the ability of traditional channels to reach audiences effectively is becoming ever more eroded. As I’ve said before, print is in a terminal decline and the future for television is almost unknowable at present. Smart companies are making digital communications central to their marketing mix and combining techniques like blogging with other new and not so new methods of message transfer. As the head of the company, if not blogging personally, the CEO must be deeply engaged with the process.
