Sun CEO Among the Few Chiefs Who Blog
Associated Press wrote:"Blogs are personal. They humanize the Web and keep CEOs in touch with what's going on out there in America," said Agno, head of Ann Arbor, Mich.-based consulting firm Signature Inc. "People feel they can really have a conversation with someone who has a blog."
Thirty Fortune 500 companies are now publishing corporate blogs, nearly double the number in December 2005, according to the Fortune 500 Blogging Wiki, a collaborative tracking site. Technology companies like Amazon.com Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and Oracle Corp. were early adopters, but senior executives at leading industrial companies like Boeing Co. and General Motors Corp. have also embrace the trend.
Associated Press wrote:"Ultimately, a good blog is good writing. Most CEOs are not good writers," said Debbie Weil, a Washington-based consultant and author of "The Corporate Blogging Book." "The packaging and controlling of the corporate message has always been done for them, so often they don't realize that writing well is hard work and takes time and thought and practice."
Blogs can also become a publicity land mine.
Nondisclosure agreements and financial regulations can turn the most literary CEOs into scribes who post rehashed speeches or press releases. CEOs may also lack the thick skin required for blogging, said David Taylor, an executive consultant in Boulder, Colo.
"One of the inevitabilities of blogging is that you get critical, hostile responses from trolls - people who post provocative things just to inflame a reaction," Taylor said.