Anil Dash recently had an excellent post about CEO’s not needing to write their own blogs, called “Another Sacred Cow Debunked: You Don’t Have To Write All Your Posts.”  All I can say to this is Amen Brother….Preach!

His discussion is about Whole Foods CEO John Mackey and his blog post about an open letter to Michael Pollen.  Mr. Mackey has an entry with a notation:

I want to acknowledge that the following letter was not written by me alone but was a joint product of several people, including valuable contributions from Margaret Wittenberg, A.C. Gallo, Edmund Lamacchia, Jim Speirs, Kate Lowery and Anna Madrona. Thanks to everyone who participated.

Anil states:

Hey, what do you know? Busy CEOs don’t always have time to do all the homework and writing for a blog all by themselves. If you acknowledge the team that helps write a blog post, just like you’d acknowledge people who help do research for a presentation or a business meeting, it’s completely okay to have people contribute to a blog that’s “by” a CEO.

He goes on to say in a bullet point:

It’s okay to get help in writing a blog. Some executives aren’t natural writers/bloggers, and even the ones who are will have busy schedules that might preclude extensive research or copy editing. Just make it clear that there’s a team effort involved, and readers will be happy just to see you engaging in a dialogue.

This is an excellent example of why perhaps a CEO would want to retain a professional blogger.  He’s correct, I hear all the time that CEO or other C level employees would never have the time to sit down and post everyday about the philosophy of the company or the day to day operations.  Even columnists have editors that help with fact checking and the occasional grammar problem. 

Our professional bloggers can be an online assistant to any of the CEO’s that cannot fathom writing a blog.  All it would take is a small statement that the blog is written by CEO so and so with the assistance of Professional Blogger so and so.  This is a perfectly acceptable practice.

Thanks for the post Anil, and I hope you can help me shout the message from the mountain tops.