Archive for CEO
Blogging as the Centerpiece of a Company’s Social Media Strategy
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve been blogging about twice a week for well over a year now. I gave my first update last summer about why I blog. Write Speak Sell would become the focal point of my thoughts about communicating ideas, which is at the heart of what I have done professionally for over 30 years. It’s liberating to say what you really think and believe, while always being authentic.
A blog is the centerpiece of a company's social media strategy
Since then I’ve also come to believe that a blog is the centerpiece a company’s social media strategy, both internally and externally. The CEO is where it all starts. Wise leaders are using social media because that’s where their employees and customers are.
The CEO needs to be talking directly to the company’s stakeholders regularly with quick takes on new developments. A blog is the perfect vehicle because the nature of a blog is to be informal and for it to express the personality and communicate the authentic convictions of the writer.
A blog liberates the CEO from his ivory tower and into conversations with employees and customers in the social media communities they populate. This is a big culture change for most companies.
With a keystroke, the CEO can distribute her blog to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media sites where people are getting their information now days. She can be out there first with the news, before the rumors and misinformation start flying around the Internet. There isn’t time for a press release vetted by a dozen lawyers before it’s distributed. Everything is transparent now.
Employee Engagement
The CEO can profoundly influence the company’s future success when employees to buy into his vision. But employees can’t march in step with a CEO who doesn’t engage them in a two-way conversation about his goals for them and the company. If he does that, they can become the company’s most important brand advocates and commit to providing superior customer service.
Once again, I cite Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh as the pioneer. In his blog last year he wrote a piece, “Your Culture” In it he said, “It’s a very different world today. With the Internet connecting everyone together, companies are becoming more and more transparent whether they like it or not. An unhappy customer or a disgruntled employee can blog about bad experience with a company, and the story can spread like wildfire by email or with tools like Twitter. The good news is that the reverse is true as well. A great experience with a company can be read by millions of people almost instantaneously as well.”
Good advice and a good example to follow.
BP CEO Tony Hayward: “I’d Like My Life Back” – What??
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As the Gulf oil disaster continues to escalate and BP is faced with another failure to stop the gushing “black gold,” BP CEO Tony Hayward has been spending his time sticking his foot in his mouth. For any company, the CEO is the chief communications officer. Where are his PR advisors with the crisis communications plan? Just two weeks ago in this video he was predicting a “very modest impact” of the spill. Now an underwater oil plume some 22 miles wide is threatening the food chain and is predicted to reach the Florida Panhandle’s famous sugar-white beaches by Friday. Even as Hayward spoke, wildlife was washing up on beaches coated in oil and fishermen sat by their empty boats as the disaster unfolded before their eyes.
Then, just this week, Hayward acknowledged that the spill is a “catastrophe” but also claimed that he “wanted his life back.” Is he kidding? His company’s alleged shortcuts may have caused the worst oil spill in this country’s history, disrupting millions of lives, wrecking the environment and causing billions in cleanup costs and lost productivity. The people living on the coastline want their lives back, too, but they can’t fly to the U.K. to escape the disaster. I can hardly think of another CEO being so tone deaf. Instead, he should be saying, “I’ll be on top of this until we solve the problem so people can get their lives back.” Theirs, not his.
Here is a video in which he makes his infamous claim:
It’s difficult to believe that a major oil company like BP doesn’t have a crisis communications plan in place, not only for managing the cleanup, but with the key messages the CEO should be communicating to the public. I’m sure that Mr. Hayward is a decent man and is sincerely sorry for this mess. But he needs to stay on message about what the company is doing to solve the crisis and be sensitive to the horrible disruption it is causing to people and the environment. Words do count. And people are listening.
The CEO as Chief Communication Champion
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The buck stops with the CEO when it comes to employee engagement. This is especially true when it comes to trust and believability. For internal communications to be meaningful, it is important for the CEO and his executive team to lead by example: “Don’t just do as I say, do as I behave.” Most employees are craving leadership – they want champions they can trust to lead them in new directions. Read More→
