Shel Israel and Jim Estill on Blogging for Executives

• • No Tags

AIMS (Association of Internet Marketing and Sales) hosted a session on Blogging for Executives in Toronto today. Featured speakers were Shel Israel, co-author of Naked Conversations, and Jim Estill, CEO of SYNNEX Canada and a Director of RIM.

The session was aimed at Directors, Vice Presidents and above. About thirty people attended.

Shel Israel provided an introduction to the what and why of blogging. Each participant at the session received a copy of Naked Conversations. Either most of the participants have already totally assimilated the content of the book or they have yet to read it. Whatever the explanation, there were few questions directed to Israel. In fact, at one point he asked himself a couple questions just to be able to answer them. (Come on Toronto, we can do better.)

The audience was much more animated in their response to Jim Estill. Questioners probed Estill’s motivation in becoming a CEO blogger and his assessment of the experience. Several of the questioners also asked for Estill’s advice on dealing with the resistance of legal departments and cautious executives. The conclusion I took away is that, at least in Toronto, business blogging has not yet reached the point of normalization.

A few takeaways from the session:

  • Shel Israel’s advice on selling blogging to a CEO: “Using a conversation to demonstrate thought leadership won’t work; using a blog to enter into a conversation to generate better thoughts will work.”
  • Jim Estill said his original objective in blogging was “to dispel the mystery about me as a CEO. Now, I get personal email from employees – and customers too – who know me through the blog. … One good thing that comes of this is that people feel they know me. When they feel they know me, they want to do business with me. On the down side, there are thousands of people who think they know me and I don’t know them.”
  • Estill says that his blog receives from 150 to 250 visitors on an average day; 1,000 on a day in which there is an event (e.g. RIM and NTP agreement; Fortune magazine interview)
  • Estill estimates that, out of SYNNEX’s 2500 employees, there are 30 bloggers, but probably only two who have persisted and become regular bloggers. The rest failed to persist beyond a few initial posts or they post rarely.
  • Estill in response to a question about how other CEOs and Board Directors react to his blogging: “CEOs and corporate don’t like it. They’re afraid you’re giving away insider information. Most CEOs also worry about the time commitment.”

    • Thanks to AIMS Toronto for organizing this session.

    Corporate blogging growing from the inside out?

    • • No Tags

    Stephen Baker suggests that corporate blogging is much more extensive than common measurements may indicate. In a Business Week article, The Inside Story on Company Blogs, Baker reports that “corporations are using [blogging] software to revamp internal communications, reach out to suppliers, and remake corporate Intranets.”

    He points to McDonalds and Connondale as examples of companies that have been introducing blog software to enable employees distributed through large operations to contribute information. Now that these internal applications have proven themselves, Baker wonders whether companies will extend blogs outside the company to their customers. Before they can do this, they will have to overcome corporate caution and fear of loss of control.

    Baker concludes:

    Companies interested in opening up branded blogs to the broad public face plenty of risks. Opponents of the company could use them to spread criticisms or nasty rumors — and the host outfit would face the wrath of bloggers if it were seen to shut down or censor customers’ entries.

    Conversely, if criticism appears on the blogs, the company can learn quickly and respond. For such giants as Wal-Mart (WMT) and McDonald’s — both subjects of blistering documentaries recently — such an early warning system might prove to be worth the gamble.