Matthew Yeomans says having your CEO blogging is ‘a terrible idea’

Dave IM’ed me earlier today, telling me to get an earful of what he’s heard on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme at some obscene hour of the morning.

It’s available for RealAudio playback (start at the 23:45 mark) and Matthew Yeomans Director of Custom Communication tells us many things about why companies need to understand new media, blogs and so forth – eg: about a conference he was helping organise, for instance.

He explicitly warns us that for company CEOs to blog is normally a terrible idea, how many chief executives you know who have time to do it, and maybe are even lucid enough, conversational enough to be able to say these things.

In which case I am very glad to work for an abnormal company.

Comments

3 responses to “Matthew Yeomans says having your CEO blogging is ‘a terrible idea’”

  1. matthew yeomans
    re: Matthew Yeomans says having your CEO blogging is ‘a terrible idea’

    Hi,

    Jonathan Schwartz being very much the exception to my comments above!

    He writes a great blog.

    best

    matthew

  2. alecm
    re: Matthew Yeomans says having your CEO blogging is ‘a terrible idea’

    Hi Matthew,

    It struck me as odd, though; I think agree that not everyone (CxO or otherwise) is cut out to have a blog – though I am not sure whether this is primarily an absolute thing (“20% of people will always incapable of blogging”) or a generational thing (“20 years from now, something like what we now call ‘blogging’ will be nearly ubiquitous”) thing, or a bit of both.

    But I did think that making such a bald statement might be bad strategy towards blog adoption within a company. From Sun’s perspective, having Jonathan doing it is a wonderful way to reassure new bloggers that they are not doing something which may cause them problems…

  3. Brian Utterback
    re: Matthew Yeomans says having your CEO blogging is ‘a terrible idea’

    Whether or not the CEO of a company blogs is certainly an strategic choice the company needs to make. But unlike a personal blog, the CEO’s blog is indeed strategic and and the CEO must make the time to blog if required, just as making time to meet with the board is required. And it is hard to imagine an effective CEO who is not lucid. Imagine working for a company whose CEO is not an effective communicator. Sure, it happens, but it must be hell.

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