CEO’s Who Blog. Case Study #1: Jonathan Schwartz at Sun

As business blogging and CEO blogging become more prevalent, I thought it would be useful to show “exemplars” of some highly regarded business blogs written by CEO’S and company founders.

These are blogs created by people who, in my opinion, get it “right.” They have useful technologies on their blog and the right mix of transparency, engagement, and customer connection.

These are just some of my favorite CEO blogs. I will be featuring several every week. If you want to do your own research and find your own favorites, you might want to take a look at Technorati. In particular, look at their Top Business Blogs.

CEO Blogger: Jonathan Schwartz at Sun

Jonathan Schwartz is the Chief Executive Officer and President of Sun Microsystems, Inc. His blog is just one of many at Sun Microsystems. They have a corporate policy that encourages blogging and they have an open policy on blogging, saying that:

By speaking directly to the world, without prior management approval, we are accepting higher risks in the interest of higher rewards.

His blog can be found here: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/

The Good: When you look at his blog you will see that it has a nice, clean look. It has a simple header, and just one sidebar on the right hand side. In other words, the visual focus of the blog is on Jonathan’s writing. And while the sidebar does have many elements, such as Sun Product links and Blog categories, they are easy to ignore if you are not interested in them. Many posts have a video embedded in them, giving you an opportunity to not only read, but also see and hear and connect with Jonathan.

The Bad: Currently under the “About Me” tab, there is a small video about Jonathan. The video is cheesy. It is too slick, too corporate and screams “corporate branding attempt.” It evokes the slick corporate infomercial that we see too much of on other mediums such as T.V. Your blog should not be an infomercial nor a T.V. commercial. Many people don’t trust those mediums and you don’t want to evoke that mistrust, do you? The power of a business blog is that they can be a form of conversational marketing. Invoke the conversation not a one-way marketing broadcast

From a search engine perspective, the “About Me” tab is too generic. The page should be labeled “About Jonathan” or “About Jonathan Swhwartz.” You may not think such a thing is needed for a well-regarded blog. But at the time of this writing his blog ranks 6th on Google for his name. Shouldn’t he try to have his blog come up first?