9 values of CEO blogging

CEO blogs are a great way to show customers that you're personally interested in them. One of the biggest complaints about CEOs is that they tend to be aloof, arrogant, and unapproachable.

CEOs should be passionate about solving customer problems, leading the industry, and sharing expertise with the public, with no strings attached. In the new digital economy, people expect a company to interact with customers.

In the new digital economy, the old "sell sell sell" is being replaced with "tell tell tell". Every single day, a CEO should have something exciting and relevant to say about customer solutions.


Here are some guiding values of CEO blogging:



(1) Online Community

Are you willing and eager to form candid, sincere relationships with your customers? Do you want your blog readers to evolve into an online community of shared interests and common goals?

Or would you prefer to NOT have to deal with customers and their unpredictable complaints, suggestions, questions, observations, or critiques?



(2) Personal Responsivity

Are you willing to act tuned-into social media and online community -- by replying quickly to comments posted by readers?

Or do you plan on delegating comment perusal to underlings, reading a comment summary report, and responding with a blanket statement to the general topic trend?




(3) Sincere Dedication

(a) Are you willing to be a devoted blogger, which means reading other blogs, posting comments on other blogs, and assembling a list of blogs you like for your sidebar?

Or do you want to just post articles and be done with it?


(b) Are your visionary zeal and leadership going to be reflected in podcasts, photos, sidebar enhancements, RSS/Atom feed syndication, tags, and video-blogging?

Or are you going to do the bare minimum, and have only a plain text blog?



(4) Communication Courage

Are you ready to risk sometimes sometimes making mistakes, posting boring articles, or not having a good answer?

Or do you fear the unpredictable reactions of blog readers and bloggers who quote and link to your posts?



(5) Understanding

Do you really grasp what the blogosphere is all about?

Or do you care nothing about the blog culture, and only seek to exploit the tool to seem hip?



(6) Passionate

Are you really enthusiastic about your industry and how your products benefit customers?

Or are you just a generic administrative type, who could be heading any company?



(7) Transparent

Are you willing to be upfront about your vision, tactics, and agenda? Are you willing to admit mistakes, and explain what you learned from them?

Or do you want to hide from public scrutiny?



(8) Humanized

Are you altruistic, benevolent, selfless, humble, helpful -- and willing to sound relaxed, flawed, slightly awkward, i.e. HUMAN?

Or are just a robotic corporate brochure, without feelings, free from imperfection? Have you no sympathy with mere mortals?



(9) Conversational

Are you willing to all blog readers to interact with you, voice their opinion, challenge your viewpoint, present a contrary opinion, ask you a question?

Or are you aloof, elite, adverse to dialogue? Do you think you can influence people by preaching from a cluelessly lofty pulpit?