CEO and employee blogs: Who reads them?
Recently JetBlue’s founder David Neeleman stepped down from his post as chief executive officer, and (among other things) people want to know whether the new CEO David Barger will blog. Okay, maybe it’s just me—various class projects have me drowning in the travel industry lately.
I heard Neeleman speak at Northwestern University several weeks ago. Given his candor (maybe a little too much candor) that day and his heavy involvement in the company, I wasn’t surprised to find that Neeleman was one of only a handful of CEOs who blogged. His past entries announce JetBlue’s new service routes and the extra four inches of leg room on their A320 aircrafts. That’s nice but as a consumer would I read a CEO blog regularly for this type of information?
For one of my classes, I read a best practices case on Southwest Airlines. Given its dedicated employees who are supported by a strong corporate culture, which values FUN and LUV, I wasn’t surprised to find that Southwest has an employee blog. It looks like any employee can post an entry. I browsed through the blog and found entries from reservation agents, flight attendants and captains, marketing managers, culture activities reps and the manager of customer communications. The “Nuts about Southwest” blog is certainly a great way for employees to spread FUN and LUV throughout the organization.
One of my colleagues, Valerie Viral, suggested that I write something about my search for a CEO blog and employee blog. So here goes. I started with Sun Microsystems (because everyone praises it). Its CEO Jonathan Schwartz has a blog (which is pretty good and honest—it’s clear that he’s writing it, not the director of corporate communications—and it's available in 11 languages!) and more than 3,000 of its employees blog. But I couldn’t be bothered to read it. I figure it’s because I’m not one of their customers nor do I have much tech knowledge. So given my background in PR, I tried reading Richard Edelman’s blog, but I couldn’t be bothered to read that one either.
Who reads corporate blogs? (Other than students like me who are trying to do class projects.) If the organization where I worked had a blog, I’d probably read it regularly. But as a consumer I don’t think I would—actually I know I don’t. However, I might actively search for a CEO or employee blog when a company experiences a crisis. That’s when I’d want an opinion straight from the company.
Corporate blogs—whether written by the CEO or multiple employees—are great internal communications tools. They should replace the company newsletter. They’re also great tools to reach reporters who browse blogs for story ideas. I guess it means less work for your PR reps.
So should JetBlue’s new CEO blog? Or should it start an employees blog? That’s your assignment!
3 comments:
Why limit yourself to blogging? There are dozens of ways a company can communicate with their customers, provide transparency, or even build loyalty through added value content.
why not a podcast with content customer's might find useful?
I think the important thing to remember is blogging is just one way to communicate to consumers. This should be combined with many other contact points, such as podcasting, to have the greatest impact.
I do believe that if you RSS a blog onto your desktop you'll be more likely to read it though.
Hi Rachel,
Thanks for the link to the Southwest blog. You are right in that any Employee can post a comment to the blog, but we have a dedicated team of about 30 Employees who write our original posts. These Employees are a mix of those on the frontlines, those in Headquarters, and some of our Officers.
Brian
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