Smaller companies often see blogging as the great equalizer. Owners can create opportunities for branding and networking, get more exposure for their businesses as a low price, they don't have to task certain types of page creation to a webmaster, and they can speak directly to their audience in a personal way that just isn't available through the typical static nature of a commerical web site. Now that Fortune 500 companies are starting to blog at the executive level, more large corporations are asking the question - are these same advantages available for CEOs of large corporations, and if so, are they worth the time expended and the potential risk? The answer is almost universally, yes. However, blogs by larger companies face issues that differ from the small company. There is the legal department to contend with, if a CEO wishes to discuss future business strategy or products. There is the publicity and marketing of the blog - there is a prevalent fear that the type of person who has the temperment to become a CEO isn't necessarily the person who should be representing the company to the public at large in a real-time fashion. For example, what if the CEO should state something on the public blog that somehow is miscontrued or reflects poorly on the company? These fears of letting the CEO interact with the company's end users with no filter are usually either overblown or have work arounds. Particularly when a proper blog strategy is employed, the benefits of having a CEO blog far outweigh the possible risks involved. Specific benefits that larger companies can enjoy can include the ability for the CEO to stay in touch with user satisfaction and issues - instead of having them trickle up through layers of people who may not have the power to take responsibility for certain types of problems, they can be dealt with from the top down. CEOs can also use their blogs to get around a layer of "yes men" that may be avoiding a sensitive issue. A recent article in CNN Money puts it this way: Executive coach John Agno said blogs can also cure the dreaded "CEO disease" -- the isolation that envelops a leader when subordinates become reluctant to disclose bad news or worst-case scenarios that might trigger a shoot-the-messenger response.
Blogs humanize a corporation. They give it a brand identity that gives a competitive advantage over other similiar companies which may not have blogs, in that they can be referenced from within a community largely made up of its most vocal, influential customers. This is also where the most potential is for a CEO blog to fail. It is not, however, the fact that a blog itself may generate bad press, as is most often thought. What tends to be the problem is either that the company or CEO mishandles an incident, or doesn't handle it at all. The fact is, the issues that exist for a corporation, are going to exist regardless of a company's presence in the blogosphere, whether they are dissatisfaction with a product line, or clients taking issue with customer service proceedures. What a company does have control over is whether they have a strong enough presence in the blogosphere to potentially shield them from unfounded attacks, or develop enough trust within the online community to make clients feel like problems that come up will be addressed. Having no blog presence at all is what leaves a company defenseless against the increasing ease which the public has to express its opinion of their products and services. | 
