By Gini Dietrich
Last week, I was in a board meeting and the marketing director shared the results of their first quarter’s efforts.
When I saw their blogging efforts had exploded, I asked her a bunch of questions about it: How are people finding you, what kinds of content works best, how many leads is it generating, and how much money did they make in the first quarter?
The results are pretty astounding. Their qualified inbound leads are up nearly 50 percent and, while not a ton of money, she was able to translate $10,000 in new revenue directly to their blogging efforts.
After I congratulated her—and gave her a few ideas for improvement (because I can’t help myself)—the founder said:
Yes, but we will have one problem. Our colleagues don’t read the blog.
I laughed out loud. I said it’s unfortunately a very common problem.
And why is that? Why don’t employees read their boss’s blog?
Seven Reasons You Should Read Your Boss’s Blog
On the heels of that conversation, I recorded a podcast with Chip Griffin yesterday and, after we were finished with the show, this topic came up.
We both agreed it’s silly if your boss has a blog and you don’t read it. After all, you might learn a thing or two and you’ll be able to impress him or her with the knowledge you gain.
Here are seven reasons you should read your boss’s blog (assuming they have one, of course):
- You’ll have direct access. No, not access in the traditional sense, but many people can only get the CEO’s time if there is a big meeting or you wait three weeks for a scheduled one-on-one meeting. By reading your boss’s blog, you have access to their brain, their thinking, their jokes, and their community.
- You’ll know how they think. Think about it. In the good ol’ days, when we walked to school barefoot, uphill, in the snow, the only way you had access to the CEO’s brain is if you were sitting across from him or her. And, the only reason that might have happened, is because you also were an executive. Today, though? Today you can see how they think every, single day through their writing.
- You’ll be able to quote their content in a meeting. (Which makes you look ridiculously smart, by-the-way). We have a colleague here who, in his first 90 days, quoted Spin Sucks (the book) back to me on numerous occasions. I’m not going to lie: That feels really good. The same goes when you read your boss’s blog. The fact that hundreds or thousands of people outside the organization read his or her blog and the team inside doesn’t is pretty disheartening. If you can quote their content in a meeting, you will be a rising star immediately.
- You’ll learn a thing…or 10. Oftentimes, an executive who blogs will use that space to think through a problem or present a solution. And that means you will learn a new way of doing things or even how he or she wants things done. It used to be that a memo would be written, edited, printed, and laid on everyone’s desks. Today, the boss can blog and expect that you are reading and you know about the changes.
- You’ll catch subtle nuances. My dad tells a story of how, in grad school, he threw in paragraphs about Mickey Mouse into papers, just to see if the professor (or teacher’s assistant) really read the papers. He found that, shockingly, most were not read. Now imagine if you’re the big boss and you write about subtle things that are happening inside the organization and no one reads it. Those subtle nuances are there for a reason—catch them and keep up on them.
- You’ll more fully understand company policies. When I blog, I often do so because I’m thinking through a real challenge that I may or may not have presented to our entire team yet. For instance, keeping a team engaged when they’re all virtual is top-of-mind right now. Though we’ve talked about it in many staff meetings (and we just implemented 15five to see if that will help), you’ll likely see a blog post here about the topic in the very near future. That’s because writing it out helps me think through solutions. That’s the case for many executives who write so it’ll be easier for you to understand policies and the thinking behind them if you read your boss’s blog.
- You’ll see their vision in action. I’m fairly certain I can ask any avid Spin Sucks reader what the vision of this blog is and you can tell me. That’s because I’m ridiculously open about changing the way PR is perceived in the business world. Now think about that if you read your boss’s blog. Suddenly you can see their vision, it makes sense to you, you can see the holes in it (which gives you an opportunity to collaborate directly with them to fix them), and you can get behind it.
My writing hour is coming to a close this morning or I would keep going because there are lots and lots and LOTS more reasons you should read your boss’s blog (or the company blog or the blog of your colleagues).
So I will leave you the floor. What else would you add?