Don't make your CEO write your blog

Who's going to write your organization's blog? Your CEO?

Not such a good idea, says Katya's Non-Profit Marketing Blog, at Should you make your CEO blog? The point:

It takes a huge amount of energy and time to blog. You have to be really enthusiastic about the medium, or it's really not going to work.

Any CEO's time and energy are at a premium. A blog would have to be awfully good and reach a whole lot of the right people to justify the amount of time it would consume.

(For example, this blog takes about eight hours a week to maintain. That's a meaningful time commitment, but it's worthwhile to my organization, Merkle. But I doubt it would be worth that much of our CEO's time. He has a lot of other fish to fry.)

Beyond the question of time, you have to ask if your CEO actually wants to do it. And keep doing it. Blogging is a long slog. If you don't enjoy the journey itself, the destination probably isn't worth the trouble.

I'm sure there are nonprofit CEOs out there who do (or should) write great blogs that really engage people and forward their organization's mission. But I'm with Katya: It's not likely to work.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, blogging, nptech

Comments

[Damian O'Broin]

Very true - good blogs by non-profit CEOs are few and far between. But one very good one is Adam Sampson's - he's the CEO of UK housing charity Shelter. Well written, relevant and interesting. And updated pretty regularly!

[Chris G.]

Agree totally, but how do you do this when your in a start up organization with staff members who work full time, and go to school? Guest Bloggers?

[Jason Dick]

I think it's great if your CEO wants to blog to use them. They know more about the organization and have a stronger commitment and influence than other staff. However, if they don't want to do blog then it will show in the content of their blog and will never get off the ground. I think that it can be a great way to connect with donors but you have to be committed to connect that way. It takes a long time to build a community and start a thriving blog.

[John Haydon]

Jeff,

Depending on the culture of the non-profit, Twitter may be a good alternative for the CEO.

The upside of having a CEO blog with Twitter is that is creates a perception that the NPO is very transparent, customer-focused and egalitarian. When the CEO of Zappos started using Twitter, other Twitter users were impressed at his openness and desire to hear from his customers.

Take care,

John