By the most recent count, 58 Fortune 500 companies are blogging. Product-driven blogs, like Owens Corning's Pink Panther Energy Blog, are rich sources of information that reliably widen the corporate marketing window. Few, however, come from the CEO or other senior leadership; in major corporations at least, CEO blogging has yet to take off.

Here is some interesting perspective from corporate trend-tracker Jeanne Meister. Common refrains, she says, include “my leadership is afraid of blogging,” or “we have strict rules allowing a small number of senior people to blog and our department is not included in this small number of senior executives.”

Corporate decision-makers are still finding their way with Web 2.0. Recently, I spoke to FAO Schwarz CEO Ed Schmults. Contemplating a social media strategy for the toy company, he wondered if his primary customers--moms--would simply gather on the bandwidth and ignore the product. That's a real question, and a good one.

Getting blogging right is also challenging. It takes time and dedication--as well as personality and a plan--and as far as a formula goes, the closest thing might be Sun Microsystems' CEO Jonathan Schwarz. The process, says Meister, starts with questions:

-Should more CEO’s be bloggers?

-Should this be part of their job in next 5 years?

-Should CEO bloggers participate as part of a corporate communications strategy or use blogging to begin a “real” dialogue with customers?

-And how can Human Resource and Corporate Learning departments “experiment” in their own departments about innovative ways to leverage social media at work while maintaining security standards?

What do you think?

Jeff Heilman

4/23/08