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CEO Blog

Source:

https://pagely.com/blog/business-leaders-ceo-bloggers/⁠

⁠

Blogging has become more than just a popular means for sharing your thoughts online. For companies, blogs are an important channel for content marketing, and for business leaders, they provide an effective medium for shaping popular opinion.

Blogs allow executives to demonstrate thought leadership, give their company a public face, control their image in the media, and communicate with stakeholders in a more personal and authentic way. There are more advantages than disadvantages, which I’ve outlined in full below.

Getting started as a CEO blogger comes with its challenges. When you’re busy leading a company, finding the time to write can be a barrier. So too is coming up with ideas for things to write about. One of the best ways to get started, however, is by drawing inspiration from existing blogs and adapting the strategies that have worked for others. Need a jumping off point? Hearing from a CEO about

an upcoming roadmap or new product release⁠

never hurts.

For this article, I scrutinized dozens of CEO blogs and identified the key attributes that make them successful, which you can easily adopt and adapt for your own blog.

WHY SHOULD CEOS BLOG?

It would be far quicker to list the reasons why you shouldn’t blog (which I do go through in detail below), but here’s a rundown of the advantages you can expect for you and your company:

Thought leadership

Blogging empowers CEOs to share and demonstrate thought leadership and define your industry’s agenda, whether it’s expressing views on

technology⁠

trends, news that is pivotal to your industry, or simply sharing your resolutions for the year ahead.

Studies show that people are much more likely to do business with a company headed by a CEO who is an acknowledged expert in the field. A blog filled with valuable information and insight into an industry is one of the most effective ways to establish an executive’s reputation as an expert.

Thought leaders are not only respected but are hugely influential. Further, showing leadership in your industry could help you get invited to speak at

conferences and other events⁠

Authentic channel to communicate

Blogging enables you to build an authentic channel for communicating with all stakeholders groups, from customers and employees to shareholders and competitors. This is especially important in times of crisis when you want to reach all stakeholders at the same time.

Brand loyalty

As the public face of your company, potential and existing customers will see and feel that you and, by inference, everyone who works at your company is an expert in your industry. This gives customers a compelling reason to engage with your company because through your blog you’re guiding them in what’s really important in your industry.

Give your company a public face

As the public face of your company, your blog can help you stay front of mind with customers and prospects so that when they’re ready to buy, they turn to your company first.

⁠

Pagely’s CEO, Joshua Strebel,

blogs as a thought leader⁠

in the WordPress industry.

Social sharing

Twitter and LinkedIn are increasingly becoming the go-to tools for business engagement. If you’re blogging, this provides massive opportunities to leverage your content on these social channels and further build your public profile.

Because your competition is blogging

You’re a leader, so lead — and get ahead of the competition. If your competition is blogging, you should too. You don’t want your competitor gain more influence in your industry than you.

Keep a close eye on their blogging efforts and try to stay one step ahead. Who doesn’t like a challenge?

Control your image in the media

Using your own words, you can help steer what is written about you in the media. Through blogging, you can get your point of view across with more depth and nuance than is usually possible during an interview, especially since you’re not on the spot and have time to craft exactly what you want to say.

Journalists often turn to CEO blogs for information and quick quotes, especially when on deadline. So by publishing ready-made lines they can include in news stories on your blog, you can catch those reporters and shape what they write about you.

⁠

Being vocal about their positioning on VC funding has landed Pagely CEO and COO

media placements that tell their story.⁠

⁠

Building your personal brand

This point is a combination of thought leadership and controlling your image in the media. As you’ll see in the collection of CEO blogs below, what you publish influences how people perceive who you are and what they believe you represent. This is powerful stuff. Blogging can change hearts and minds.

Educate the market about the problems you’re solving

Again, this comes back to thought leadership and how you want to position your company in your industry. According to Gartner research, companies with CEOs who are viewed as experts in their field perform better in a range of areas, from investor awareness (even though we think this is much less important than potential customer awareness) to major alliances.

Good PR

Blogging can help generate more opportunities for public relations. If you have interesting opinions about your industry that you want to put on the public record, journalists and others will turn to your blog for relevant information when compiling an article.

Show your passion

Great business leaders have two things in common: they are passionate about their work and they love sharing their passion with others. A blog is the perfect tool for sharing your passion with the world. By writing about your passion, you’re telling the world that you’re dedicated to your industry and want to make it better.

THE RISKS OF EXECUTIVE BLOGGING

There are a few risks to keep in mind:

Unhappy customers could use your blog as a direct way to vent about problems with your company. As such, you’ll see comments from people in your blogs posts that aren’t necessarily related to your posts.

Your words could be taken out of context. For journalists, what you publish on your blog can be used as a directly attributable quote.

There are compliance risks so be careful about what you write about, especially if you’re publicly listed.

Stakeholders, including employees, customers, journalists and competitors, will read your blog and hold you to your word. This means that you should only write about what you feel comfortable publishing publicly.

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