CEO blogs used to be all the rage within the business blogging community. Remember when we’d hear blog consultants gush about CEOs who dared to blog with transparency and authenticity. I rarely hear much talk about CEO bloggers anymore. Do you?

Remember Jonathan Schwartz? He was the poster child of blogging CEOs, the now former (as of February 3rd) CEO of Sun Microsystems. All you could hear was crickets on Jonathan’s blog from May of last year until finally Jonathan’s farewell post on January 27. Clearly he had a few things going on; Oracle was in the process of acquiring Sun. When you’re selling your company that is pretty much all that occupies your mind. I know that first-hand, as I’m happy to say my company (Netconcepts) was acquired by Covario last month.

The thing that most struck me was the name of Jonathan’s new blog. It’s titled “What I Couldn’t Say”. Hmmm. I guess transparency within a corporation only goes so far.

With the economy is in freefall, perhaps the tolerance of various boards of directors for CEO transparency has lessened? Or it could be simply that CEOs are just too busy and blogging isn’t such a priority, now that “blog” isn’t Word of the Year anymore.

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, is another CEO blogger who was acquired and who we don’t hear from any longer in the blogosphere. His last post was July of last year, and that wasn’t so much of a blog post as it was a copy of a letter that was sent to all the Zappos employees announcing the acquisition by Amazon. Before that, Tony last posted in January 2009.

I’m guilty too. My own “CEO blog” hasn’t seen any activity in over a month — no posts since Covario acquired us. But the reason for my ‘radio silence’ has nothing to do with the acquirer. I may no longer be a President/CEO, but I am still encouraged to keep blogging. The reason I don’t blog frequently is the same one as last year (when I was only posting a few times a month at best): I’m preoccupied running around speaking at conferences all over the U.S., writing for magazines, etc.

Then there are the corporate blogs where the CEO occasionally chimes in with his/her own post. My acquirer, Covario, fits into that group with its “Actionable Insights” blog. Trinity Road, an etailer of religious products like first communion dresses and rosaries, has a corporate blog, but you rarely if ever hear from the CEO on it.

Then there are the CEO blogs where you wonder if it’s actually the CEO who’s blogging because it’s so polished. Steve Spangler the science toys e-tailer, I think fits into that category. If you look at the posts on Steve’s blog you’ll see a gradual evolution to a style that is more and more polished.

Chris Baggott, CEO of the Compendium Blogware, has one of the best CEO blogs out there, in my opinion. It’s full of valuable content, it’s not overly polished, his personality really shines through, and he blogs regularly. It figures though. If any CEO would have that kind of a CEO blog, it would be the CEO of a business blogging software company!

Compared to typical direct marketing efforts (snail mail, DRTV, email, etc) where an offer is created based on a company developing a product and packing it to meet a need or purpose, a social media marketing program will focuses on creating awareness, relationships and possibly involving communities with creating the offer before it’s every promoted.

As a comparison, take a look at what a typical direct marketing program might look like:

• Develop top level messaging
• Research and build an email list
• Acquire snail mail lists and segment
• Create and implement a series of email offers to the list with landing pages
• Create and implement a series of direct mail pieces
• Setup and run PPC campaign(s) with landing pages
• Craft story and press releases
• Research publications for planned stories and journalists covering the topic
• Distribute optimized press releases via wire services
• Pitch story to industry and regional publications, editors/journalists
• Leverage coverage from pitching as part of final email promotions
• Solicit feedback from those signing up and use as testimonials for subsequent promotions

The list could go on and on really, depending on the budget, timeline and objectives. From the perspective of a traditional marketer, it seems pretty logical, right? It’s a straightforward marketing campaign based on developing an offer, defining a target audience and creating a series of messages intended to communicate the offer and convert. It also uses public relations to augment direct marketing efforts in addition to leveraging positive feedback for subsequent promotions.

While the above overview marketing plan is pretty straight forward, it runs contrary in many ways to the kind of digital marketing programs that companies the world over are warming up to: Social Media Marketing.

With social media marketing, there is an assumption that there is already involvement with the social communities involved - profile(s), network of friends, content submission, voting and participation. That’s the big mistake most marketers make when trying to promote products and services on the social web. They’ll create an account on a social media site, put up some content and expect the social media world to be their oyster without having built a network first.

So, what would a social media marketing focused program look like as an alternative to the direct marketing promotion above?  Let’s take a look:

• Monitor discussion on social communities and networks for key conversations, keywords and topics
• Identify top concerns relevant to what the company is promoting and develop messaging for solution
• Identify influentials in the social communities, bloggers and authorities - ask them their opinion
• Identify media types most often used with topics and communities - text, video, image, podcast as well platforms for communication: blog posts, comments, microblogging, status updates, social network notes, social news and bookmarking and as possible, direct messaging and IM
• Create messaging specific to media type and platform as way of sharing information about the offer
• Create content destinations that explain the offer and that also offer the opportunity to interact, share opinions and comments - blog posts, video, event pages on social networks (like a landing page, but focused on being informative and encouraging discussion, not salesey)
• Reach out to influentials on a one to one basis, recognizing them for sharing their opinion, explaining the offer and your goals - ask them to join in in spreading the good word. Explain what’s in it for them and what’s in it for the community.
• Monitor the communications that result in the most signups and provide feedback on progress
• Offer influential bloggers a “free pass” to blog the event or a preview of what’s being offered
• Recognize participation and contribution to reaching goals
• Continue to engage interested participants and communities

Seems like a lot of work and possibly more effort than it’s worth to a traditional direct marketer. But to those involved with social media and social communities, it’s familiar territory. Focusing on developing solutions based on what the audience wants, then involving the community in developing and promoting creates evangelists for the promotion. Recognizing participation energizes the community and can multiply the speed and breadth of message distribution, discussion and action.

Social marketing invests in social communities with useful content/solutions as well as participation and recognition. That investment delivers long term dividends far beyond a one time promotional program using direct marketing tactics.

If the budget, timeline and resources warrant it, a combination of both sets of tactics can be very appropriate.

Have you ever wondered how to make sure that you provide the opportunity for people to share the great articles on your blog to their social networking sites?

You might recall I wrote about one tool recently that you can add to the side bar of your business blog that allows people to save PDF’s of your articles and even email them to others.

A plugin that you might want to consider for your business blog that is becoming increasingly popular is ShareThis. ShareThis is available to use across a host of blog platforms including WordPress.org and TypePad.com

You’ll usually see the ShareThis logo at the bottom of an article or blog post.

When you click on it you will see you have several options:

• You can post the article and share it to your favourite social networking sites such as Digg and Ma.gnolia
• You can make sure that your friends at your social networks such as Facebook and Twitter know about the post or article you have read
• And you can even email yourself or others a copy.

Of course it’s not just making sure the readers of your business blog understand what the ShareThis logo means - it does rely on us as content creators writing content that people want to pass on to their friends or keep as reference material.

So why not consider adding ShareThis to your business blog? And if you have added the ShareThis plugin to your business blog, perhaps you can share with us your experience of it as a tool to encourage people sharing your great content?