Business blogging != executive blogging

Another example of creeping "headism": Stephen Baker at Business Week warns that "The business blog backlash is nigh".

How long will it be before a parade of CEOs and other top execs turn their backs on blogging with a dismissive 'Been There, Done That?' It's the rare CEO who has the time and energy and openness to blog.

    I fully agree that it's hard to imagine many CEOs keeping up a decent blog for long. Not only do they not have the time, but the natural voice of the boss is fundamentally incompatible with the voice of the blogger, at least as regards their own company affairs (which is why I don't write much about Wired here).

    But it's a huge mistake to equate executive blogs with business blogging, just as it's a huge mistake to see the world only through the economic and culture lens of stars and hits (what I call "headism"). The best business blogs come from the employees, not the bosses. They have more time, and are less prone to marketing gobbledygook and gnomic platitudes. And those kind of blogs are on the rise, not the decline.

[Definitional update: I'm using "business blogs" here the same way Baker did--blogs from within a company that are largely about that company and/or its products. I'm not referring to blogs about business generally. Other terms for this are "corporate blogs" or "company blogs".]

    The most successful business blogs are peer-to-peer: engineers, designers and managers within a company blogging about their own projects for the engineers, designers and other customers outside the company who use those products or care about that project.

    Traditionally corporate messaging is directed up through the management structure within a company until it is released via an executive speech or press release, at which point it is supposed to be picked up by the press, filtered again, and trickled down to the public and ultimately the customers. But now that sort of top-down messaging is losing its effectiveness as consumers vote with their browser to go directly to the unfiltered voice of people like them.

    Simply put, we're starting to trust what executives say less and what employees say more. And if given a choice, as is the case with companies that let their employees blog, we'll take the word of an articulate engineer in the belly of the beast over the double-speak of a press release any day. As institutional credibility declines (from Enron to the White House), individual credibility is taking its place.

    Markets are conversations, not speeches. People want to hear from real people, not remote authority figures. Abstract institutions are turning transparent to reveal communities of regular people. And as that trend continues, consumer attention will shift from the institutional voice of the management to the human voice of their peers in the rank and file.

    In a speech last week at the m-squared marketing conference, I called this the power of "ants with megaphones". What's great about company blogging below the executive level is that it's impedance matched to blogging about the company from outside. Robert Scoble and Dave Weiner debating in public is a conversation of peers. Reading a New York Times account of a Bill Gates speech is not.

    Scoble himself expands on this in a great post that ends on the right note:

So, CEOs, if you don't get blogging, that's OK. It gives guys like me who are seven levels down from the CEO something to do.

Comments

[steve baker]

Chris, I agree. My point is that business leaders (and their followers) may conclude that business blogging is bust just because their own efforts have yielded little. This could generate analysis panning business blogging. But as you note, valuable blogging is occuring within businesses--just not much of it from the corner office

[chris anderson]

Steve,

It's a reasonable thesis, but I don't see any evidence of it as yet. I know of no examples of CEOs who started blogging, then stopped and allowed no others in the institution to blog. Usually the CEO blogs *along* with others in the firm. And when the CEO stops (as is often the case, as you rightly point out) the others continue.

["-"]

A sharp CEO could run a company from a blog.

That's extreme, but possible. (Make a great story.)

But most CEO's don't have the vision or an example to get them "up" for this. Let's see if we can find someone that will serve as a shining example of:

CEO who runs his co. by blog.

"-"

[ville]

I think it is a question of which has more power, the network or the hierarchy. And as history shows us, hieararchy maybe able to perform certain spectacular, massive top-down efforts in execution and slow down the network, but eventually the network will succeed in penetrating the hierarchy and become a part of it. And regarding computer-mediated communication, in which the medium is becoming more and more networked, this is the inevitable change.

A good example of a succesful infection of a social hierarchy with a network-like organization is international terrorism. It has extremely similar network structures to the blogosphere and it has succesfully penetrated the hierarchically governed countries.

We could also take another radical stance to this. If blogging changes the role of the CEO and the CEO is the change catalyst of the corporation and if the flow of information inside the company becomes networked, does the corporation organization structure then become network-like? :)

[David]

Chris, for the most part I don't think we're missing much if CEOs don't blog. As everyone knows, most CEOs don't even write their own statements to stockholders in their company's annual reports; they hire the job out. I agree that the best blogs come from the employees themselves.

[Paul Rosenfeld]

I think your pronouncements about what makes good business blogging are premature given that "business blogging" is so nascent. All the "rules" that have been "written" about blogging are mostly holdovers from celebrity-type or political blogs, so I would simply advise us to wait, watch, and distill important insights from those CEOs who take blogging to heart.

[Mary Schmidt]

My view is that "to blog or not to blog" is a personal choice, regardless of the level of the person in a company. If it fits their personality, their culture and their market - sure, I can see CEOs continuing to blog. Most of them, however, as noted above, don't do any of their own writing for anything, much less touch a keyboard. However, as more and more "web heads" gain power in the upper echelons (i.e., the old guys leave) this could change.

Further, blogs are just like any other marketing tool/tactic - they're as good (or as bad) as the users.

[Francis Hamit]

When I ran a US Army Newspaper in 1970, in the Dark Ages before computers could fit on a desktop, my Commanding General had a regular Command Information column which was, of course, ghost written by me.

I imagine that CEO blogging will go the same way, with the actual writing being delegated to a subordinate who is wise in the culture and governing regulations. So much for spontaneity.

[Mark Clark]

I enjoyed reading your stuff. Cool site. It's the other lousy two percent: http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Lily_Tomlin , I do not believe in an afterlife , Discontent makes rich men poor

[John-Paul Micek]

I think what Baker is missing (in his article and in his definition of business blogging) is that communication and connection is at the core of business blogging, as it is with all blogging. Rapport, education, and connection do not need the CEO personally blogging in order to occur. And to state that business blogging is doomed because of CEOs and that they may stop personally blogging is like saying Nordstrom will cease all customer service because the CEO is not "on the floor" personally.

Chris, it seems Baker is just another business writer who just doesn't get the long tail. :)

Aloha!

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[Jeff Barson, CEO Nimble]

The typical CEO blog of "we introduced such-and-such product yesterday and it was a great success" can't compete with individuals who have actual stories to tell. Blogs will used for a myriad of opportunities.

[ragavendra]

the bosses are trying to take a lot so advantage from their employees and this is not at all a fair one .they should be given their liberty.
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ragavendra

Business Sales

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