There Is No Template For Executive Blogs

A story in the Financial Times earlier this week (title: "Why executives should steer clear of the blogosphere" - paid sub needed to read it) took a critical look at a few blogs by senior company executives, and mentioned a senior HP exec with a blog that I hadn't seen before. Randy's Journal by Randy Baseler, VP of Marketing at Boeing Commercial Aircraft ("Randy is new to the blogosphere, and I'm afraid it shows. The point of blogs is that they are personal and fun to read; his is a tarted-up press release."); Dan Socci's blog by Dan Socci, Vice President of HP Services, Technology Services Marketing; and SAP blogs portal (you have to be registered on the website as an SAP community member in order to access this) shows four executive board members - Shai Agassi, Lo Apotheker, Claus Heinrich, and Peter Zencke - with blogs. These SAP blogs are more like discussion forums; you can comment but none has trackbacks nor RSS. If you want to keep up with new posts, your only options are to keep coming back to the website or sign up for alerts by email. Nevertheless, judging by the range of comments there, they may well be getting towards at least part of their stated goal: "These blogs are a platform that facilitate learning and the sharing of best practices. [...] And they encourage you to submit comments so you and other members can share thoughts." What all these executive blogs have in common is their differences. Each reflects its company's personality, so 'behaves' differently in terms of content, how it's presented and what you can do (inter-relate) with it. At this point, I'd cautiously say that I don't think that really matters. I could argue that those blogs that don't enable visitors to easily and spontaneously leave comments, trackback to posts or sign up for RSS feeds are missing quite a few tricks in the relationship-development department where compelling content and Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson's blog: