The three biggest challenges for CEO bloggers are discipline, passion (about your expertise) and writing ability.
You’ve got to have the discipline to blog and keep at it over a long period of time (months, years).
You’ve got to be passionate about whatever your expertise is.
And you gotta be able to write well, to express yourself clearly, convincingly, compellingly. You have to be compelling enough that you’ll keep your readers coming back and interacting with your blog.
Writing well is hard
So why are there still so few really good CEO bloggers? Because that trifecta is hard to come by. And, er, writing well is hard. Really hard.
Interestingly, there’s a bit of a Catch 22 in this: the more you write (or blog), the better your writing (blogging) becomes. So while there may be a minimum threshold for discipline + passion + writing ability, once you pass that you’ve got loads of potential to become an effective CEO blogger.
A handful who pass the test:
Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems
Note: Jonathan’s blog is now in 11 languages including English. See the drop-down box in the upper right-hand corner! Update: as of this writing, the translated blog entries are not appearing yet.
Karen Christensen of Berkshire Publishing
Matt Blumberg of ReturnPath
Richard Edelman of Edelman PR
Zane Safrit of Conference Calls Unlimited