Should CEOs or other senior executives blog? That is an open question. Certainly some do, and do effectively.

Executives who blog include Bob Lutz, Vice Chairman of General Motors, Jonathan Schwartz, President and CEO of Sun Microsystems, and Mark Cuban, owner of The Dallas Mavericks among other things.

Some of these blogs are easy to dismiss. Although Bob Lutz’s blog is great, GM is in such bad shape that perhaps this is a move of desperation? Companies in tough shape have little to lose by blogging or anything else. Sun Microsoft is a high tech company and lots of high tech companies blog – we can almost say there is a tradition here.  And Mark Cuban is, well, simply a maverick. Besides, as a billionaire entrepreneur, the rules are somewhat different. Oh yeah, he’s in high tech too.

How about Randy Baseler, who was the VP of Marketing for Boeing? He blogged at Randy’s Journal. Apparently it was such a success that Boeing chose another Randy, Randy Tinseth, as his replacement so the blog could carry on interrupted (was it Shakespeare, or maybe Jerry Garcia, that said something about “a Randy by any other name  . . . ?”). Or Bill Marriott of Marriot Hotels. Well, let’s just say CEO blogs, at least out of high tech, are few and far between.

So, should CEOs and other high-level executives blog? Quite frankly some are not great communicators -- some make me cringe every time they open their mouths, few have “extra” time, and this whole blogging phenomenon is in its infancy.  And what about “ghost blogging?” Is it the sin most bloggers seem to insist?

We’ll cover these and other issues this week, and let’s just summarize for the moment with:
“Some CEOs and other high level executives can blog quite effective, and conversely, some certainly shouldn’t!”

REMINDER:
Coming next week: October 22-26, 2007 Ted Demopoulos, author of Blogging for Business tackles the issue: Should CEOs Blog?

ABOUT THE TOPIC:
"CEO Blogs" are blogs written by executives. At their best, they put a human face on huge corporations. At their worst, they have been boring... or phony... to the point of doing more harm than good.

Are CEO blogs worth the trouble? Are they worth the risks? What if a CEO can't write... or hasn't got the time to write? Can they have ghostbloggers or blog less frequently? Will that undermine the whole purpose of blogging? The week of Oct 22, Ted will answer these and other questions on IAOCblog.com.