At the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) conference this week, Bill Marriott was honored as the 2008 EXCEL Award Winner. I figured he’d reference the irony of speaking at the Hilton in his first sentence, but he waited until his second.
This was one of the speeches I was most looking forward to. Bill is in his late seventies and one of only a handful of CEO bloggers in his peer group. And since he’s not in the tech indstury, it’s even more remarkable.
Here are some quick notes from Bill’s remarks:
- Bill doesn’t type his posts, but he records them and they are transcribed
- The blog has received over 500K visits since January 2007, and according to Bill, generated nearly $4 million in hotel sales (NOTE: he was asked how he was able to track this and played the old man card, claiming he didn’t understand the technology)
- His most popular post to date was this one on tipping
And a couple of choice quotes:
I would recommend blogging to any CEO. It’s worth it.
Whether we like it [social media] or not, we have to get on board.
Stories are the things that people remember.
What seems to make Bill a great blogger is his passion for his company and his ability to spin a good yarn. Reading these posts feel very authentic. But not every CEO has this gift, nor the same type of hands on approach to running a company as he has. Bill travels to 300 Marriot properties a year, which provides lots of fodder for colorful stories and blog topics.
Now I guess we can debate a bit about whether Bill’s blog is a true blog or not. He doesn’t actually type the posts himself, as I mentioned above. I’m sure they are edited a bit as well. And he has the submitted comments printed out once in a while for his review, but he certainly doesn’t maintain this dialogue on his own. But he makes no attempt to hide it, and I appreciate the transparency.
I don’t thing that it makes sense for every CEO to blog. In fact, I would probably say that most shouldn’t. Engaging in a conversation of this nature is important, but it takes a certain type of individual to communicate well on this platform. It’s not for everyone, but there are certainly those within every organization that are more adept at it than others. Embrace them!
Having heard him speak, the blog feels very authentic. Mr. Marriot has been in this business his whole life. He’s passionate about the people that work for him, and he’s got a team that helps him share this vision using a new platform. Whether or not he actually types the posts seems a bit nitpicky all things considered. At least when I’m reading his stories, I know what I’m getting.
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