Writer out front: One CEO's reasonable strategy

It's not popular in the blogosphere to point out anything that would limit the amount of potential income for self-appointed blogging experts who want to earn consulting dollars helping everybody blog.

The last time I suggested in print擁n The Ragan Report葉hat I didn't think most CEOs would be able to sustain interesting blogs, with or without the help of their speechwriters, I had consultants yelling at me for weeks, telling me how shortsighted I was and sending me lots of examples of exceptions that傭log, blog, blog, blog, blog用roved my rule.

As I usually do when I am cornered, I held fast to my point of view and I still do.

But last week I came across a story in BusinessWeek that alerted me to an alternative way that a company could do a good blog謡ithout forcing its CEO to turn into a daily columnist, and without really threatening the blogging experts.

Stornyfield Farm, a yogurt maker based in New Hampshire, has a CEO who doesn't blog but who believes in blogging and hired a "chief blogger," Christine Halvorson, to write several blogs for the company擁n her own voice.

The CEO, Gary Hirshberg, told BusinessWeek how he got the idea for hiring a company blogger: "Before the New Hampshire primary, my wife, Meg, and I got really involved with Howard Dean. His assistant, Kate, had been his blogger. There was a party one time for 150 people, and Howard came. Everyone was excited to see him, but when Kate walked in you could hear the buzz. As a guy interested in building brands and in particular building through unconventional means, I was really intrigued by the kind of immediate intimate connection created by blogging."

Stonyfield went looking for a writer "who could speak as you and I are speaking right now." He found Halvorson on Monster.com. "I knew what blogs were and had read some out of political interest, but had not blogged myself," she told BusinessWeek.

She was hired and writes five blogs in her own voice溶ot Hirshberg's預nd under the label "Blogger Chris."

Good for Halvorson, good for Hirshberg, good for Stonyfield.

Now: Will lots of companies push writers out front in this way?

Probably not. Even putting CEOs' egos aside, most firms would be understandably gun shy about giving some writer that much power to make relationships with customers.

But this arrangement is still more realistic for most firms than CEO-as-blogger, it seems to me預nd more sustainable in the long-term than speechwriter-as-ghost-blogger.