Should Korean CEOs Blog?

I came across an interview with my U.S. colleague Steve Rubel on Canadian TV discussing the question, “Should CEOs Blog?”  It’s towards the end of the show here; if you have a spare hour by all means go ahead and watch the whole thing but Steve’s interview is from 46.40 if you fast forward and goes for 8 minutes.

The interview raises some important concerns about companies and CEOs beginning to dip their toes into the blogopshere but raises some good points about having dialogue with your customers.    The point that sticks out to me is Steve’s advice that companies should think about “what [they] want back” from a blog.  Simply: a blog is a conversation.

Message control has been paramount for Korean businesses; it’s intertwinned with business culture here.  However, this is certainly something that Korean companies have faced up (or are still facing into) when dealing with international media: it’s very hard to control your message 100%; you have to be realistic and understand the channel you’re communicating in.  This is no different when thinking about communications through the internet; you can shape and direct the conversation but you can’t control it.

I think there’s a lot of room for identifying the “passionates” within Korean organization and having them be the blogging advocates for the company; getting a CEO to blog openly and honestly is going to be challenging considering the structure and controls in place in Korean organizations.  This seems like a good initial step for a Korean companies and it’s something our online team here would agree with and recommend.