There’s really no debate about whether the benefits of blogging outweigh the investment. Blogging attracts more visitors to your site, results in more leads, and boosts your other marketing efforts. Once you’ve come to terms with the necessity of a blog, you can ask yourself what strategy you want to take with your content creation, one of which is posts written by you — the CEO.
Content creation is more work than most people realize, so it may not be for every business owner. For those who invest the time however, CEO blogging can improve the trustworthiness of your brand, diversify your clientele, and attract visitors to your site who didn’t search for your product. Give it a go, but remember the most important thing is to make it interesting. Full stop!
Collaborate and listen
No one can do it all, and just like leading a successful business, writing engaging blog articles requires your whole team. What you think is interesting or worth talking about may not match what your team sees from customers and support calls. Run topic ideas past the team and send around early drafts to make sure everyone agrees that the content is worthy of your client’s attention.
Ultimately, it’s your business, and what you write about is your decision. But keep in mind that you’re day-to-day schedule probably stands in stark contrast to those of your employees. From catching outdated product information to coordinating your editorial calendar with other marketing efforts, involving the whole organization is a surefire shortcut to success.
Quick to the point…and no faking
The shortform vs. longform content debate rages on, but it’s a safe bet that readers aren’t expecting — or possibly even interested in — anything too wonky from a CEO blog. What readers are probably looking for is brief and honest commentary on the company philosophy, history and direction.
Your site includes detailed information on whatever you produce elsewhere (or at least, it should), which means your blog posts should be focused on putting a face to your service. For example, check out this awesome CEO blog post:
As the Co-CEO of Capstone IT, Sitima Fowler accomplishes a number of things in one 500-word article. She outlines a few key company values and explains how they foster a healthy work environment, and ultimately a better customer experience. And she does it by collaborating with a fellow business leader! It’s quick, to the point, and authentic.
If there’s a problem, you’ll solve it
Whether it’s publicly addressing and resolving a customer complaint or promising to look into customer product requests and upgrades, customers want to know that the people in charge are looking out for them. You have an opportunity to inspire confidence in your product and your customer service by interacting with customers in a public forum.
Imagine a customer complains about your shipping services lacking a two-day option. Why not try to make lemonade out of lemons instead by addressing the issue head on? Write a blog about the customer’s complaint with an apology and an announcement that you’ll be switching shipping providers to gain access to more shipping options.
The customer who complained would be hard-pressed to argue that your company doesn’t care for them, and everyone else reading the post gets to see firsthand how accessible you are as the leader of the organization.
Stay at it, daily and nightly
Regardless of what your finalized blog strategy looks like, it needs to be consistent. Both Google and your customers will take your post frequency into account when evaluating the value of your content, and only writing “when you’ve got time,” isn’t going to cut it.
CEOs are busy and the only way you’re going to really avoid the stale blog trap is by writing ahead of schedule. If you’ve decided to post two blogs in the coming month, write three or four on evergreen topics that can act as backups in case you start to fall behind in the future.
Like anything in business, there isn’t a single strategy that works for everyone. Experiment with off-the-wall topics, weird image choices and/or fun video blogs — whatever it takes to show your readership that you have something different and interesting to say.
Ultimately, a CEO blog is little more than a name. And with help from the Pronto Growth Management team, you can get both a detailed 12-month marketing calendar and outsource content creation based on company case studies, organizational values and community involvement — . When you’re ready, check out our service while the DJ revolves it.
