Our Blog - Know your RSS from your elbow...

There’s a case to be made that, if you can’t get your company’s internal communications right, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to engage with your customers in any authentic, believable, or genuine manner. I chose these three adjectives deliberately. Not that I have a habit of using random words but these three in particular lie at the heart of a December press release for a new report that focuses on what a number of CEOs at high profile organisations consider essential for building trust in their workforce.

All well and good, of course, but what struck me was that the ambitions aired and the desired outcomes of the interviewed CEOs seemed stuck on the workforce. It was as if they couldn’t make the obvious leap from realising that what worked for their workforce would work for their customers. Here’s a typical remark from one of the CEOs: “I think employees are smart enough to understand that things aren’t always going great.” Replace ‘employees’ with ‘customers’ and is the sentence - and sentiment - any less valid. Of course not.

The message from the press release and the report in question is that CEOs are keen to appear more human - but only to their employees. Customers will still be fed the ‘positive message’ and the ‘spin’.

December also saw, coincidentally enough, Todd Defren posting his ‘Open Letter to CEO Bloggers’ on the PR Squared blog. It’s an excellent piece on the necessity of listening as a precusor to joining the conversation. CEOs, like everyone else, can get excited by the possibilities of blogging and the opportunities it can bring personally and for your company. Of course, CEOs can be larger than life and accustomed to being noticed. They might expect their blog to be noticed and praised, simply because of who they are. It’s a hard lesson to learn: the web teaches humility. Before you start saying things, try and discover what your audience are interested in hearing.

So, whether a CEO is communicating internally or on the web through a blog or any other social media, being human, admitting mistakes, showing a little humility and, more than anything, being honest, will reap rewards that bluster and spin can never hope to match.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Tags: CEO blogging, Todd Defren