Thanks to Kate Ehrlich who pointed me to an Oct. 4 Fortune article by David Kirkpatrick on the benefits of senior executive blogging. David highlights the blog of Jonathan Schwartz, “the highest-ranking executive yet to embrace the new medium, which is burgeoning globally. About 35,000 people read his blog (in a typical month, including customers, employees, and competitors. Schwartz encourages all Sun's 32,000 employees to blog, though only about 100 are doing it so far.”
Kirkpatrick goes on to quote Schwartz: "I don't have the advertising budget to get our message to, for instance, Java developers working on handset applications for the medical industry. But one of our developers, just by taking time to write a blog, can do a great job getting our message out to a fanatic readership." He adds, "Blogs are no more mandated at Sun than e-mail. But I have a hard time seeing how a manager can be effective without both."
David then covers some of the well known Microsoft and Sun efforts, the concerns over misuse, and mentions that many executives also read blogs. He concludes with a nice example, “During a recent conference for Microsoft software developers, top company executives huddled backstage reading up-to-the-minute blogs written by the audience to get a sense of how their messages were being received.”
The immediacy of blogs provides a new vehicle for audience feedback.
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