BulletProofBlog the blog on crisis communications

Each week, Bulletproof Blog features exclusive interviews with thought leaders on issues of critical importance to companies and countries. This week, we interview Paul Levy, the President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, about the opportunities for CEOs in the blogosphere.

Mr. Levy' s blog, Running A Hospital, is one of the most popular CEO blogs on the Web. As a corporate leader who has been sharing messages in the social media space for nearly three years now, he shared his insights on what CEOs stand to gain.

Based on your experience, why should CEOs consider blogging as a primary communications function?

Paul Levy: A CEO not having a blog today is like a CEO 20 years ago not using a telephone. If part of your job as CEO is to represent your organization in the public eye in a way that is consistent with your strategic objectives, why wouldn' t you consider new methods like blogs, Facebook, and Twitter - which are just as, if not more, effective than radio, television, printed press, and speeches?

Blogs are unedited, so you can share exactly the message you want when you want. They are available in real time. The recipient can read your messages asynchronously. And blogging is free. All of these aspects are what corporate leadership looks for in communications. This wasn' t apparent to me when I first got the idea to launch Running A Hospital after reading a story about how few Fortune 500 presidents write a blog - but after some time at it, the value of sharing messages via blogging has really sunk in for me.

What have you found most surprising about your blogging experience?

Paul Levy: When I started writing posts about some of our quality and safety improvements at Beth Israel Deaconess Media Center and publishing the clinical outcomes, I discovered that the blog is really a management tool as well. As I published stories about the positive things people were doing at the hospital, they would feel proud and motivated. Also, because the employees knew I was watching and would be writing about what they were doing, it made them more attentive and gave them a greater impetus to do better.

Do you have any cautionary notes to share with CEOs who may be considering their own blog?

Paul Levy: Once what you write is out there, it' s out there. But there' s an antidote to that because you can correct what you' ve written in real time - and most important, within the same news cycle. Unlike a newspaper story, if I print something on the blog that' s in error and someone writes to me, and tells me about how badly I messed it up, I can fix it.

For example, back in 2007, I learned about a fascinating clinical trial that could have major implications for people with asthma, so I wrote about it. Not long after, somebody from an NGO advocacy group wrote me saying that I really shouldn' t be writing about the treatment because our hospital had a commercial relationship with the company doing the trials. I didn' t know that when I wrote the post - so I added an addendum saying that "It has come to my attention that we have a commercial relationship with the company engaged in the trials. I was not aware of this before today and I apologize for not mentioning it in my original post."

In a different venue, such as a newspaper, it could have been an embarrassing, long-lived story. So I guess this isn' t as much of a cautionary tale as it is another case study on why blogging is something that all CEOs should consider.

Larry Smith is Senior Vice President of Levick Strategic Communications and a contributing author to Bulletproof Blog..