Business Blog Advice

I recently looked at the archive history of one of my marketing blogs … “all the way” back to the first post in April 2006.

It struck me that I didn’t even have any opening remarks about the blog. I just sort of jumped into things and started posting. I did not set any agenda or tell readers what they could expect, because back then I had no readers.

But obscurity is not usually the case with a CEO blog, or a major corporate blog. CEO blogs often have an audience right from the start — especially when they’re launched with media fanfare, as was recently the case with Bill Marriott’s CEO blog.

Launching a CEO Blog - A Short History

So how should a CEO or corporate exec kick off a new blog? However they want, is what I say. After all, there is no protocol for such a thing. Nor should there be. Blogs (in my humble opinion) should be anti-protocol. They should be whatever the author feels, since they are an extension of the author. Good ones, anyway.

With that said, I thought it would be fun to see how some long-time CEO bloggers kicked off their blogs. Here’s a summary of first blog posts, as these CEOs embraced the blog and said “Hello World!”

• Jonathan Schwartz, COO of Sun Microsystems and a well-known corporate blogger, started off with the understatement: “Odds are, this is going to attract some attention.”
• Beth Carvin, CEO of Nobscot, launched her blog way back in 2002, with a short prediction of things to come.
• Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, talked about his surprise at finding a Craigslist mention in the book Sex and the City.
• Karen Christensen of Berkshire Publishing Group brought her CEO blog to life with a post about slogans and taglines … and making the world a better place.
• Hu Yoshida of Hitachi began by asking for feedback on data storage, blogging, and angels dancing on the head of a pin. You’ll see.
• Alan Meckler of Jupiter Media recounted his bad trade show experience at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Vegas.
• David Sifry, founder and CEO of Technorati, started his blog way back in January 2002 with a post about digital entrepreneurs.

To be continued … probably for a while!