CEO Blog Tips: 12 Ways to Blog like a Boss

By Andy Crestodina

Smart companies embrace content, mobilizing their various teams to contribute. Companies that are the best at this take it all the way to the top. When the CEO blogs, you know content is truly part of the company culture.

Top CEOs blog more than ever before, bringing credibility and transparency to their own websites. If you’re the CEO of a business, big or small, you have some big advantages in blogging. Sure, you’re busy. But if you can throw your weight into your marketing, you’ll reap the rewards.

Here’s a quick list of blogging tips for busy bosses:

Topics: Think Big

As a CEO, you’re perspective is as broad as anyone else in your business. You watch trends across longer timeframes, months, and years. Your focus is across all parts of the business, marketing, sales, delivery, finance, and more. You’ve got more dots to connect.

Beyond this, the CEO blog topics can include leadership, which has a broad appeal to a huge audience. The biggest topics, such as mission, vision, and values, are covered by the biggest business publications, online and off.

1. Write about leadership, values, and business tips on topics like communication and time-management. Answer the biggest questions in your industry.

2. Spot big-picture trends across industries.

3. Take a stand. Come out strong for or against something.

Don’t worry if it’s been said before. Even if your prospects and website visitors have heard the message already, hearing it from you will raise their opinion of your business.

C-Suite Credibility: Use Your Title

You have an unfair PR advantage: your CEO title. Because of this title no one in your company will have an easier time getting press than you. You can use this title to get interviews and press mentions.

4. Write letters to editors.

5. Contact a journalist, offering to provide a comment or interview in response to the news of the day.

Journalists love to talk to CEOs. No other title carries the same gravitas.

Delegate

You’re busy. As CEO, your time is one of the most precious assets within your business. But you’re a manager, so know one knows better than you how to leverage the support of your team.

6. Send a “crappy first draft” or rough outline to your marketing team. Let them finish it.

7. Leverage your time by working with a PR firm or marketing vendor. A short conversation/interview with you can lead to a nicely written post.

8. Leave a quick voicemail for your marketing team with an idea.

Don’t be a control freak. This is the key. The exact wording of every sentence in a blog post isn’t what’s important. Judge the content on the quality of the message, not the placement of commas.

Be Simple. Be Direct

Because of your title, people know you’re busy, so short, concise blog posts are expected. No need to go long.

9. Get right to the point.

10. Skip the fancy business-school talk.

Jargon isn’t good for blogs or any other form of written communication. The bigger you make your words, the smaller you make your audience.

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Heidi Cohen, Actionable Marketing Guide

Skip the corporate-speak. Your blog shouldn’t sound like it was written by a computer. Provide insights that only you can provide your business, your market, and your customers. This means finding the time to at least dictate the blog content to someone else can to edit and publish. If you’re outsourcing your blog completely, it looses the key essence of your voice.”

 

Be Influential, Inside and Out

As a CEO, you’re likely in the habit of giving timely, direct feedback to members of your team. But in many cases, the spirit of the feedback fits a larger context, and it would be useful to a wider audience.

As social media marketers say, “Never waste a good conversation by having it in private.” If the advice you’re giving internally is relevant to the rest of the world, write it up as general advice and publish it. This lets the rest of the company read it, as well as job candidates and sales prospects. Some of your team may decide to share it. That kind of employee engagement can do wonders for the reach of the content.

11. Use internal conversations to drive topics for the blog.

12. When you make a decision as a company, explain why you made the decision on your blog.

Capture your insights and expertise in writing and your influence will reach far beyond the meeting room and conference calls.

Heavy is the Head That Wears the Blog…

The CEO blogger sets an example throughout the business. Creating content is about helping your audience and that’s everyone’s job. Don’t do it and you’ll send a message that busy people don’t need to blog.

But do it well and you may find yourself slowly writing your way toward a book. These days, books are often started as blogs. The CEO blog, more than any other, has the chance to grow into a book, but also magazine articles, speaking engagements and traditional media interviews. That’s marketing that money can’t buy.

What CEO blogging tips do you have? We’d love to hear them in the comments below.

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