블로그는 글을 쓰는 것이고, 글은 생각을 표출하는 것이다. 따라서 CEO 블로그에는 CEO 가 관심있어 하는 것이나 생활하는 것, 고민하는 것이 자연스럽게 묻어 나올 것이다.
전에 미니홈피가 유행할때 인터넷 포탈 CEO들이 미니홈피 들에 대한 기사가 있었는데, 거기에는 그냥 형식적인 글들 몇개들이 있었을 뿐이었다. 그러나 조인스닷컴 CEO는 기자 출신 답게 많은 이야기를 풀어내고 있다. 4월달의 글의 갯수는 8개, 5월달은 23개, 6월달은 지금 8일인데, 8개이다. 장난아니다.
그런데, 직원이 회사일을 쓰는 것 보다 CEO가 쓴다면 더욱 더 회사의 분위기나 정책들도 나올 수 있다. 사내 인트라넷 시스템이 아니라 누구나 볼 수 있는 인터넷에 CEO의 블로그가 있는 것은 어떤 의미일까?
홍보로써 좋은 효과가 있을까?
경쟁사에게 전략이나 CEO의 정보동향이 노출되는 것은 괜찮을까?
투자들에게 신뢰를 주지 못하는 내용이 있으면 어떡하지?
홍보 효과 보다 걱정이 앞서는 이유는 왜일까?
우리 CEO가 공개적인 블로그를 쓰는 것이 좋을까, 아님 안쓰는 것이 좋을까? 쓴다면 어떤 것을 주의해야 할까?
아직 잘은 모르겠지만, 조인스닷컴 하지윤대표의 블로그" 의 글과 답들을 읽다 보면 오픈한 CEO의 솔직한 고민에 대한 반응을 볼 수 있는 것 같다. 서비스를 한번 봐달라는 답글에 연락해 보라는 답글. 서비스가 어떠냐에 대해서 어떻다는 CEO의 답글 등.
CEO 블로그, 기대반 우려반이다.
위에서 말씀하신대로 '기대반 우려반'이긴 하지만 우선 내가 CEO가 아니므로 이 주제에 대해서는 생각을 그만 정리해야겠다고 생각하고 무심코 링크된 포스트들을 보다가 관심주제를 발견했다.
참고로 내가 관찰한 바에 따르면 블로그를 쓰면 쓰지 않는 것보다 훨씬 득을 볼 수 있는 사람들은 다음과 같은 일에 종사하는 사람들이다.
1: 회사내 홍보팀에 있거나 홍보 대행사/홍보 컨설팅을 하는 사람들
2: 인터넷 커뮤니케이션 산업에 관련된 기획이나 컨설팅 일을 하는 사람들
3: 인터넷 기업… 그 중에서도 블로그 관련 벤쳐나 소셜 미디어 계통에서 일을 하는 사람들
4. 대중적인 책을 쓰는 사람들
이 포스트에 달려있던 아거님의 덧글의 내용도 도움이 되는 분이 있을 것 같아 인용해본다.
아무래도 직장 생활을 하는 블로거들은 직종에 따라 득보다 실이 될 수 있는 경우가 있다는 것이 교훈이겠지요. 특히 체면을중시여기고 개인기보다는 조직과의 융화를 중시 여기는 우리나라에서는 더욱 그런 경우가 많이 존재하겠지요. 결론은 세가지입니다.
1. 구직 희망자나 직장 생활을 하는 사람들은 비판적 소리보다는 긍정적인 목소리를 낼 필요가 있다.
2. 홍보 목적이 아니고 자신만을 위해 뭔가 기록한다면, 외부 노출(메타사이트 등록, 검색엔진 등록)을 절대 하지 않는다.
3. 외부에 보일 경우라면 가급적 에피소딕 기억(=일화적 기억)을 남기지 않는다.
4. 학계에 있는 사람은 가급적 블로그를 하지 않는게 좋다. 지금생각하면 로렌스 레식 같은 분은 홍보 블로거에 가까운게 아닐까하는 생각이 든다. 그 큰 조직체와 대의를 가진 운동을 소개하는데 학문적 공동체는 레식의 블로그만큼 영향을 줄 수 없을 것이다.결국 교수중에도 블로그를 할 경우, 뭔가 목적의식적으로 대중과 교류를 할 필요가 있을 경우 하는 것이다.
5. 이름을 내기 위해서나 공신력이나 권위를 내세우기 위해서가 아니라면, 블로그는 가급적 필명으로 하는 것이 바람직하다.필명으로 해도 자신과 자주 교류하는 사람들은 서로 인사를 나누고 누가 누구인지를 알 수 있는 것이기에 아무 문제될게 없다.
세상일이 다 그렇지만 블로깅하는 것도 자신의 위치에 따라 나름의 철학을 가지고 해야겠다는 생각이 들었다. 가급적 필명을 쓰는 것이 좋다는 점에 특히 공감.^^
펌하는 김에 나중에 시간나면 읽어보기 위한 클리핑. 너무 길어서 당장은 도저히 읽어볼 엄두가 안난다.
When Stanford University medical student GrahamWalker performed a breast exam for the first time, he didn't discussthe somewhat nerve-racking experience with professors, friends, or histhree female classmates. Instead, the would-be doctor posted hisfeelings on his blog, "Over My Med Body!" at www.grahamazon.com, for all the world to see. The hilariously honest report, titled simply "Boobies," reads, in part:
Normally in patient interviews and interactions,I try to let my personality shine through ... But in this situation, Imust've been too objective, too sterile. I started doing my palpations,and the instructor said, "Man, it's like I'm being examined by arobot." So, I'm going along, doing my little "light, medium, deep"motion, which seems to take hours, and everyone else just starts goinginto bra and cup sizes and pasties and minimizers and maximizers ...Estrogen's oozing from the walls. Anyway, we all finish our exams, andwe're reminded that this is a skill that requires practice.
Over the past three years, Walker has uploadedhis thoughts on everything from dissecting his first cadaver andgetting overly attached to patients to broader policy concerns such asthe new Medicare Part D drug legislation. The result is a witty,readable, and very public online diary. "I wanted a way that I couldreflect on my day-to-day life as a med student," says the 25-year-old."Part of it is a defense mechanism to be able to turn an awkward oruncomfortable situation into humor and laugh at myself. But it alsoallows me to vent frustration and share fun stories or big-think ideasduring what can be a pretty isolated time."
Unfiltered. It shouldcome as no surprise that young, tech-savvy graduate students withcountless theories and opinions to share make model bloggers and thatthey're using the seemingly ubiquitous medium in ever growing numbers.These Web logs, which run the gamut from strictly academic to decidedlypersonal, provide an informal, immediate, and wide-ranging forum forfledgling scholars and professionals alike to mull over their research,say, or to rant about difficult advisers and dissertation dilemmas.What's more, blogs can also provide would-be grad students anenlightening and largely unfiltered window into the ivory tower. Andwhile several recent controversies show that blogging in academe isn'twithout pitfalls, aficionados say their Web ruminations are a valuabletool for pursuing the life of the mind. "I enjoy reading andwriting--that's why I'm in this profession to begin with--so bloggingmakes perfect sense," says Rebecca Goetz, a sixth-year Ph.D. candidatein history at Harvard University who launched "(a) musings of a gradstudent" (www.rebecca-goetz.blogspot.com) in 2002 in part as a way to air her passionate political opinions. "I see no downside, as long as you're appropriate."
Budding scholars who blog say they especiallyvalue the ability to connect with others in their fields in mereminutes, as opposed to the months or years it can take to publish injournals. Although Goetz has been known to post photos and storiesabout her cat, she spends most of her time in cyberspace addressingintellectual issues, including her pending dissertation on theinteraction between Christianity and slavery prior to the abolitionmovement, parts of which she's actually posted online. "When I hit abump or have a problem I can't work out, the blog is a more casual wayof working through that," says the 27-year-old, who recently wrote anentry about problems she was having counting godparents in earlyVirginia wills. She received lots of supportive, helpful feedback fromreaders, including some very practical advice from a fellow historianregarding spreadsheet formulas.
Still, many graduate student bloggers choose touse pseudonyms so they can address the occasional controversial subjectwithout fear of repercussions. For example, the author of"newoldschoolteacher" identifies herself only as a master's candidateat a graduate school of education in New York. She uses her blog ( www.schoolnerdblog.blogspot.com) to expose thedisheartening and often exasperating instruction she encounters inpedagogy and methods classes that are supposed to be progressive butwhich she's come to view as largely out of touch and ineffective. Shealso recounts her student-teaching stints at various inner-city highschools in a frank and unsparing style:
If you don't believe me that 11th graders don'tknow anything about the American Revolution, here are some studentguesses I received today as to who fought who: 1) The colonists werefighting the Indians. 2) The British were fighting the English. 3) Thewhites were fighting the British. 4) The whites were fighting theEnglish. And we can't forget 5) The Indians were fighting the NativeAmericans. As if this were not depressing enough, the kids' behavior insecond period is getting out of control. They throw balls of paper.They swear at each other across the room. They hit one another. Theyrap. They yell. They do anything but the work. When the teacher talks,there are eight other conversations going on at the same volume level.My teacher refuses to do anything about this. Refuses. In fact, shethinks that 'the class is going really well!' Whereas I would put itmore like, 'the class is an unmitigated disaster!'
Like many blogging peers, Newoldschoolteacherworries not only about being discovered and disciplined but also aboutthe ethical issues of writing about people she comes into contact with,be they students, peers, professors, or advisers--and takes great painsto preserve their anonymity as well. "I'm not really sure what therules are for this kind of thing--they probably are kind of unclearbecause it's such a new medium," says the scribe. "But I guess, for me,I feel it's worth the risks to have the outlet."
Every so often, an industrious reader will takeit upon himself or herself to expose a blogger. That's what happened toZachary Wyatt. As an anonymous first year at the University ofWisconsin Law School, he launched "The Rising Jurist" (www.onebluesun.org/trj), which covers everything fromSupreme Court nominees and DNA evidence to his pet mouse, Scalia. Atthe end of that year, a classmate asked if he was the mystery bloggerand--after he acknowledged that he was--chastised him for a post inwhich he poked fun at a peer who wore a button saying, "This is what afeminist looks like" on her purse. (He wrote that she suffered "theclassic faults of a poor spokeswoman for feminism: too pretty, toothin, and too young.") Wyatt, now 27 and set to graduate, recalls, "Itwas an odd situation, being approached by someone I barely knew andbeing told not to write such shallow posts. That really brought homejust how public a blog could be and how easily a dialogue, whetherpositive or negative, is started with readers." Now he encourages suchback-and-forth debate and fields rebuttals to his views on everythingfrom the death penalty to the law school's grading system. His favoritecriticism? "Jurist was boring yesterday."
Luckily, Wyatt hasn't suffered anyconsequences--academic, career, or otherwise--since being unmasked.However, it appears that there are some risks for Web auteurs on thejob market. Indeed, a debate erupted in the academic blogosphere lastsummer when a humanities professor at a small liberal arts college inthe Midwest published a pseudonymous column in the Chronicle of Higher Education called "Bloggers Need NotApply." In the article, "Ivan Tribble" detailed his work on a facultysearch committee that evaluated several candidates whose websites wereeasily located through Google--whether or not the applicants mentionedthem on their resumes or in interviews. In each and every case, theblogs had a negative impact, due to inappropriate personal content,misrepresented research, or concerns that such scholars might "airdepartmental dirty laundry (real or imagined) on the cyber clotheslinefor the world to see," wrote Tribble, who affixed a strong warning:"Job seekers who are also bloggers may have a tough road ahead, if ourcommittee's experience is any indication."
Professional pitfalls.Those already working in academe may also find themselves in hot water.Political science Prof. Daniel Drezner, for one, believes that his ownwell-known blog, www.danieldrezner.com, may have played a role in hisbeing denied tenure at the University of Chicago last year; he nowcautions graduate students and untenured peers to think carefullybefore creating web diaries themselves. The ivory tower's old guard, heargues, is likely to overestimate the amount of time it takes tomaintain a blog and also fail to acknowledge any potential intellectualvalue, among other downsides. "One of the problems with blogging isthat it provides an alternative route through which academics canattain status, outside the more proper, traditional, peer-reviewedpath," adds Drezner, who'll move to a tenured post at the FletcherSchool of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University this summer. "As aresult, there's always going to be hostility toward people who manageto do that, in the same way there is toward those who write onlypopular books."
Interestingly, fields like business and law tend to be more accepting of blogging (legal "blawg" offerings include www.threeyearsofhell.com and www.lawdork.blogspot.com).More and more institutions are using student-written butschool-sponsored blogs on their admissions pages in order to provide amore intimate--if occasionally somewhat staid--look at their programs,including Vermont Law School, the Wharton School of Business at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, and the Eller College of Management at theUniversity of Arizona. (Typical entry: "One of the more interestingaspects of your second year at Eller will be the job hunt.")
So how can those looking for the inside skinnyon grad-school life use such sites to their advantage? Current studentssuggest that applicants would be wise to scour both authorized andoff-the-record blogs about particular institutions or disciplines for amore realistic perspective than glossy brochures provide and to post orE-mail specific questions. Others are a bit more circumspect. "I think[these sites] can be somewhat useful but would always say toprospective students, 'Be cautious about taking too much informationfrom complete strangers, because you just don't know who these peoplereally are or what their agenda is,'" says Robert Schwartz, associatedean for admissions at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at YeshivaUniversity in New York, which is currently considering integratingblogging into its own admissions process.
Back in California, Graham Walker has alreadystarted to contemplate the fate of "Over My Med Body!" whose audiencehas ballooned from a handful of loyal relatives to some 1,500 readers aday. "I know a couple of [residents] who've been told by theirattending physician or programs that they have to stop--probablybecause of confidentiality issues," says the physician-in-training.Nonetheless, he hopes to continue recording his experiences in medicinein some way after graduating next spring--for himself, his readers, andalso, in a way, his patients. "I want them to know that I'm a falliblehuman behind my white coat, not some godlike figure who canautomatically heal them or give them a magic pill. I say things Iregret, think things that are wrong, but through my blog, I try toanalyze these things and recognize the wrong assumptions or badbehaviors so I can correct them," he muses. "I think it's reallyimportant to get that out there."
