Continuing with my writing about blogging, another interesting question before me is whether senior management should blog, and if so where, as in inside the firewall or have public blogs? There has been much written about CEO blogging and corporate blogs. In this post I list various sites I found, some I really liked.
The big question that still remained for me is whether senior management should blog within the firewall or outside? Of course if they are connecting with the customers or partners, it is best to have a public blog. But if the main purpose is to connect with the employees, should this with only confined to password protected (or otherwise) within the firewall or should be a public blog? There are advantages of a public blog. I believe the corporate information walls are anyway so porous that it doesn’t really matter having a blog within the firewall. We regularly find corporate emails written by CEOs/senior executives being forwarded endlessly. A public blog will help connect senior management to potential employees, and also stay connected with former employees. Both these are important in this age of talent crunch. Of course, having a blog within the firewall makes it easier for management to talk about clients, failures and be more specific about projects and internal policies. So the jury is still out there about which is better.
Would love to hear more views on this subject.
My Top 10 CxO Blogs:
- Bill Marriott, Chairman & CEO of Marriott International – well written and connects with customers and employees. I quite like this one.
- Tom Glocer, CEO of Thomson Reuters – As per Tom, in his blog he is going to “write about what interests me, which is often my work at Thomson Reuters, as well as wider issues like technology and media - two areas that I am fascinated by.” Seems like a genuine attempt to connect with employees and make the leader in Tom more human.
- Vineet Nayar, CEO, HCL Technologies – reads like a blog aimed at conversations with employees. Vineet wants this blog “to yield an untiring momentum that will help us collaborate to transform our today and craft our own tomorrows.”
- Rajeev Karwal , Former President and Chief Executive, Reliance Retail, Reliance Industries Limited –truly a personal blog “to express gratitude to people, organizations, stories and situations which have taught me some important lessons in professional and personal life.”
- Scott Ragsdale, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, naseba – Very un-CEO type blog, written from the heart, couldn’t care less about what people might think. As per Scott, “the main purpose of this blog is to communicate with my 300+ employees, my future employees and leaders of naseba, my clients, future clients, and investors – at the same time helping me stay focused on my climb — to build naseba into a multi-hundred million euro company.”
- Jonathan Schwartz, CEO Sun Microsystems Inc. – writes mostly with customers as intended audience. Seems more like the Sun website and less like a blog.
- Kevin Lynch, Chief Technology Officer, Adobe – software development is Kevin’s passion that has led to great products from him and his team.
- John Dragoon, Chief Marketing Office for Novell – a nice mix of company specific and generic content. Has good content for marketing folks.
- Sanjeev Bikhchandani, CEO, Naukri.com – a personal blog, unfortunately not updated frequently
- David Neeleman, Founder and Chairman of JetBlue Airways – “Each week I fly on JetBlue flights and talk to customers so I can find out how we can improve our airline. This is my flight log”, one post a month, however unfortunately last updated in Oct 2007.
Corporate blogs (in no particular order):
- Tata Interactive Systems – combination of blog and corporate website
- Infosys – lots of technology channels
- Wipro Campusarena – surprisingly reads like a blog. Aims to facilitate one-to-one interaction with Wipro’s Campus Hiring Team and Wiproites so that students get a taste of what working for Wipro is all about, the release added. As per their policy doc, “a platform for students to share and discuss information about life at Wipro Technologies and activities”.
- Southwest Airlines – “state of the art use of social media by a big company: a blog, Flickr pics, video, polls, news and more”, could well be a company website, doesn’t quite have the feel of a blog.
- Dell – a blog about Dell products, services and customers
Interesting links about CEO/Corporate blogs
- Should CEOs blog? Seth Godin gives a short and sweet about why blogs work and why CEO blogs might not succeed. He says blogs when they are based on Candour, Urgency, Timeliness, Pithiness and Controversy. Interestingly Seth Godin’s blog does not invite comments.
- Blogging India: A Windows Live Report – opens a Microsoft Word document, a November 2006 report on India’s blogosphere.
- Mark White provides an Anatomy of a Corporate Blog: Layers and Building Blocks.
- Top 15 Corporate Blogs (based on Technorai rankings) – on Mario Sunder’s blog (Community Evangelist at LinkedIn)
- Mario Sunder, Community Evangelist at LinkedIn – a great resource for learning about corporate / CEO blogging
- Debbie Weil’s top 8 tips for corporate blogging in 2008.
7 comments:
Wired magazine had an article a while back about transparency for CEOs who blog. The general argument is that CEOs who can find the right balance and be open on their blogs may improve customer loyalty and ultimately their bottom line.
The See-Through CEO
Hi Manish.
It's second time today I have come to your blog. Great list of links. Thanks :-)
@Christy - Thanks Christy. That was a very useful link.
@Amrit - Glad you found the links useful Amrit.
I think you meant southwest airlines not northwest airlines. Unless you know something I don't. :-)
Thanks for pointing this out John. I don't know anything that the world doesn't already know :-). I am correcting it in my blog.
check what the industry says about companies workexp.com
Thanks Ranjan. It is indeed an interesting site, and it even publishes my content without acknowledging my blog :-).
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