Why should you start a CEO blog?

To build an authentic channel communicate to all stakeholders (customers, employees, shareholders, competitors, regulators). A blog gives you more leverage to communicate to all these stakeholders at the same time.
To give the business a personal and public face.
As a way to build and accelerate relationships – if trust is critical to your sales process.
To educate the market about the problems that you solve.
As a key sales tool, if you’re selling complex products that require education.
To build industry leadership and get invited to speak at conferences, and quoted across the media.
There’s no better channel to build thought leadership.
To get your point of view across with more depth and nuance than is possible in the media.
As a key channel for your business to get found (through search engine traffic).
To start conversations with clients at scale. You can open a conversation with many clients at one time.
To generate more opportunities for PR. You have a number of interesting opinions on record which can generate future opportunities to be quoted and give opinions.
To build trust. Content builds relationships, which leads to trust.
In today’s market, there’s more choices than ever before. This increases the barrier to purchase, which means that trust before purchase is more important than ever.
To stay front of mind with clients and prospects – so that when they’re ready to buy, you’re front of mind.

Typewriter blogging - the early days

Why shouldn’t you start a CEO blog?

If you’re not prepared to be authentic. You must share the highs and the lows of your role.
If you expect that it’s a PR only activity that can be completely outsourced.
If you can’t dedicate the time to blog, at least once a month.
If you’re not prepared to make a long term commitment.
If you’re not prepared to be entertaining, and see the funny side from time to time.

You will building personal, and company reputation.
Increasing intimacy with potential customers, leading to faster sales closes.
A key lead acquisition channel (especially in B2B).
A strong foundation to power content marketing and amplification strategies (especially in B2B).
A practical way to improve your understanding of the social media and the technology landscape.
Content can be redistributed to power all of your social media channels. If structured well, a blog should be usable across all of your social media channels.
An authentic channel to communicate in times of crisis (as demonstrated well by Royal Caribbean International’s president and CEO, Adam Goldstein).
You’re creating a platform to define the industry agenda.

Your blog will become a direct vent point for customers – not all of whom will make rational, structured arguments. You will see comments that aren’t necessarily sensible or related to the article you’ve written.
Compliance risks. You need to be careful about what you’re talking about, especially if you’re publicly listed.
Your blog will be read by all stakeholders. That means your employees, customers, journalists and competitors. Your views need to be consistent and defensible to all.
Posts can be taken out of context. Everything you write is a directly attributable quote.

The economics of content. 80% of your returns will come from 20% of your posts.
Headlines are critically important. Learn about the principles of great headlines for blog posts (or find someone in your team who has time to).
To get your blog shared, you need great images. The best images are those that you take on your mobile phone whilst walking round inside your business.
Get buy in from the marketing. CEO blogging is not just a marketing tactic. But there’s always a substantial marketing angle – and it’s important to have alignment with the marketing team.
Succession planning. Is the blog personally owned, or property of the company. Will it move on with you?
Tracking success. Make sure you’ve got an analytics framework in place to measure success.
Alignment and positioning. It’s important to get alignment between what you write about and what the business offers.
Don’t be boring. Would you read this (really)?
Don’t be too formal. The right topics are conversational.