For CEOs: use your blog wisely

Nowadays, social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, are so popular that some people have stopped writing blogs. Wait! Check out the following websites – they are all blogs of CEOs.

http://blog.craigslist.org/ (CraigsList: Jim Buckmaster)
http://blogmaverick.com/ (Dallas Mavericks: Mark Cuban)
http://www.blogs.marriott.com/ (Marriott: Bill Marriott)

Blog is not dying. For many times, it is more effective to interpret ideas and opinions than to twittering with a limit to 140 characters.

You may keep a blog to complain what happened to you, writing reviews about restaurants you had dinner, places you visited, movies you watched…

But what do these CEOs post on their blog? Today, let's look at Mark Cuban's blog.

Mark Cuban's blog is really a popular one. Every single blog post has many comments, and some of them are quite long and thoughtful, which means those audiences cared about what the blogger’s opinion and they also thought hard after reading the posts.

Cuban did not often write about corporations that he works for (there are some posts related to topics including NBA, sports business and sporting events), on the contrary, he wrote most of the blog posts about current national issues such as tax, employment, electronic books, and social media. He also talked on the blog about himself – his childhood, his experience when he started business and what hardships he underwent.

It is very easy to know what political stance he takes, what exactly his view is to certain events and issues. The pros to this kind of CEO blog are:

1.       The blog gives readers an impression that a real person is writing all the articles, rather than some other anonymous guy on behalf of the CEO and the company. Readers can feel the personality of the CEO from what he has written. Generally people find it interesting to listen to a person, rather than an official voice. When people notice a real CEO is writing a blog, they may feel more close to this person and also the company – a feeling that they are not far away from our lives.

2.       Current issues invite more discussions on the blog. Some of the issues such as tax and employment are under fierce debate. They are closely related to everyone’s life in the country. When the public are discuss these issues and watching how different parties arguing about them, they also want to know how a influential people thinks about these issues. If he/she makes sense to what he/she says, people will feel positive about the CEO, and hence the company.

3.       Posting thoughts about current issues keeps blog updated. People will stop visiting a blog if they find the blogger has stopped writing for too long. Sometimes, CEO may not have so many appealing things to write about their own company frequently. Therefore, current issues will help keep the blog moving forward.

4.       CEOs’ blog promote their own visibility and also the companies’.

How about cons for a CEO keeping a blog?

The blog may be appealing to the public when the CEO post current issues on it. However, as I just mentioned earlier, many of the current issues are under a fierce debate, which means some people may agree with you, while some do not. It would be great that people agree with you and comment supportively, especially when the CEO’s stance is on the mainstream side.

But what if he/she makes a very controversial argument? Remember he/she is a CEO. He/she has the right to express their opinions, but sometimes that reality is so cruel that the person as a CEO may think more times than a nonpublic figure before posting an article on a blog. Because what he/she says may jeopardize his/her company.

I believe there are more pros than cons for a CEO to keep a blog with personal characteristics in it and personal opinions about current issues. Because this is how communication between people (or between a influential person and the public) can continue and how this relationship maintains.

Political PR -- when a political candidate are off message

You are the PR director for a political candidate who has decided to autonomously Tweet and post to Facebook. Some of his/her Tweets/posts are off message and controversial and are receiving criticism. What is your response and why?

Firstly, whatever a politician says, he/she will receive criticism. When it comes to misunderstanding or ambiguity of messages sent on Twitter and Facebook, he/she needs to articulate his/her stance, in order to let people understand what he/she is really talking about. It's also necessary to explain the previous posts and make them on message. If he/she does not explain anything, other people are very likely to exaggerate and distort the information, and make it even more misunderstood.


In reality, politicians may delete posts. But sometimes it may not be a good idea to do so. Because information distributes really fast through the Internet and it is impossible to solve problems simply by deleting posts -- some people must have already copy and paste the posts. Quite likely, people may think the politician is escaping from what he/she have done if the posts were deleted. Clarifying misunderstanding is probably the best way in this situation.


Then, I will strongly suggest the candidate reviewing his/her tweets and posts on Facebook very carefully before publishing them. He/she should make sure everything post online is clear and on message. If it possible, asking assistants or counselor to view posts first. Just like when you are doing mathematics exercise, it will be more difficult for you to discover mistakes than it for other people. 


Apologize if necessary, especially when some posts have misled the public.


Deleting posts may be considered if the posts will jeopardize the party he/she represents, or the candidate cannot explain well on previous posts. But even posts are deleted, the candidate still need to clarify what he/she really wanted to say, which must be on message this time. Also, he/she needs to make statement on reasons of deleting previous posts. Then people may view deleting posts as a gesture of admitting mistakes and willing to make it right.

Benefits or pitfalls? When donating time and resources in PR.

I’ve heard someone talking about public relations (PR) when I decided to apply a graduate school. Some companies spent a lot of money in PR in order to get them more attention from the public, obtain good images (although we may think obtaining a good image really depends on sound products or service that a company can provide), and build good relationships with the public.

By sending pitch letters to reporters, conducting campaigns, redesigning logos and slogans and applying all the other strategies and tactics, PR practitioners have spent a great deal of time and used all kinds of resources to do their work.

What are the public relations benefits of donating time and resources?

In my point of view, the benefits will be the results that you are trying to achieve—get more publicity, manage a crises, receive donations and many other different goals.

These are all very ideal situations and PR practitioners are hired to reach these goals. To take an example of getting more publicity, all kinds of tactics are used nowadays. Every time when I watch a video, there will be a advertisement before the video starts. I have to wait till it finishes. And just through these a few seconds, a brand, a new movie or a new product have entered into my brain.

However, the benefits are not necessarily proportional to time and resources donated.

Think about our non-profit client for the research class, Hiscock Legal Aid Society. It has a nice and well organized website, blogs and media pitch for every event they organized. However, they have undergone lack of donors for a long time.

Invisibility is one of the results even PR is operated. What makes things worse is PR  may also jeopardize the image of an organization or a person.

Recently, one of my friends is complaining about how some companies misuse social networking websites to promote their products. When a Internet user click one of the “new events” on their homepage, the page is actually not how it appears on the “new events”. Instead, it goes to the social website of a company or a product. It looks like a computer virus because as soon as you enter that webpage, you automatically add it as your “friend”. And it is very hard to remove this “friend” from your friend list.

These companies probably want to get their products being noticed by more net users. However, this is absolutely a bad and unethical way to do this, and people are only going to get mad on these companies and their products.

Benefits or pitfalls? It really depends on how you donate time and resources rather than how many you donate them.

Finally, there is a video for you. Maybe you can get some ideas from it.

Have a nice weekend.

Social media, thoughts after the presentation

This is the second week of fall semester in Newhouse! Philip R. Johnson gave us a presentation about social media in public relations. Here are my thoughts about what he present.

There are many insightful points in the presentation. Firstly, understanding the situation of an organization is more important than using social media that are popular at the moment. Many organizations are using social media as a platform to communicate with the public. However, this tendency does not suggest that social media are always good for every organization. An organization should think about contents, frequency of posting, crisis management when something goes wrong in social media and all kinds of situations that it will confront when using social media at the very beginning.

Secondly, I strongly agree with "the big principle"--focus on relationships, not the technologies. Recently, an well-known Chinese English teacher Li Yang has accused of domestic violence. His wife posts pictures and micro-blogs through  Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter (click here to see his wife's Weibo). Li Yang has  Weibo account as well (click here to see Li Yang's Weibo). However, facing tons of comments about the violence following his regular micro-blogs, he replies nothing and gives no comment about the accusation.

This is not merely a personal crises. As the founder of Li Yang Crazy English, his silence jeopardizes his company. This is an example of how relationship is not well managed when using social media. While social media offer great opportunities for the public to understand an organization or a person, they also allow the public spread negative information widely and fast.

Furthermore, personally, I agree with the statement "relational schema favors benefits of mutual/accurate exchanges of real self-experiences." My favorite GRE teacher Luo Yonghao is a public figure, the founder of Laoluo English School . His micro-blogs are quite different from many other well-known English teachers such as Li Yang and Yu Minhong.

Luo's blog is quite personal, with all the micro-blogs written by himself expressing his own thoughts about anything he finds interesting. He also reply others' comments time to time. Whereas Li and Yu's micro-blogs are always written with the style of chicken soup for the soul. They are less personal and not written by themselves. Few comments following get replied.

It is a common situation that people pay more attention on the CEO or founders of organizations rather than the organizations themselves. Because people are more willing to talk to a person than an organization especially people don't even know who is behalf on it. However, still, many people seem like micro-blogs that share no real self-experiences in China.

I'm not sure whether this situation differs from cultures. One phenomenon in Chinese social media is many people love the style of "chicken soup for the soul". Celebrities are followed and liked by thousands of fans, even though no comments are replied. Probably it is because celebrities are people and organizations are not. However, sometimes the boundary between webpages of a person and webpages of organizations is not quite clear.

In addition,  I do not totally agree with "shorter posts, higher frequency" strategy. This strategy can be very annoying if the frequency is too high. People do not want to see a full screen of tweets from only one organization. When I meet this situation, I will unfollow this organization's twitter in order to leave some space for tweets from others.

Finally, in respect of full truth, Internet users may want to know that, but sometimes, the full truth may be related to someone else' privacy or other rights. Therefore I think people need to fully consider consequences before telling full truth.



Overall, many principles are quite helpful to understand how to use social media. However, it must take great effort to follow these rules for long-term management.

About Me

My name is Liuqing Ye. I'm from the East Coast of China, Zhejiang Province. My hometown is called Suichang. It's a very small town that even people from other areas of Zhejiang are not very likely to know this place before I tell them. I went to University of Nottingham Ningbo, China, studying International Communications with Japanese. After the graduation, I came here, Syracuse University.

I do not have any PR experience before. The reason that I choose PR as my major is because I had a module in year 3 of undergraduate school about public relations, which I found it interesting and worth studying.

After one and half months study here in Newhouse, I'm now interested in non-profit PR. Although sometimes I'm thinking of doing crisis management, especially when I saw how the Chinese government handled problems, I'm afraid that politics in China is too much for me.

Follow my Twitter @YeLiuqing
                Sina Weibo @和谐的桃子
                Email: lye02@syr.edu