Karen Christensen is CEO of Berkshire Publishing Group, a small (dozen employees) publisher in Massachusetts. I’ve been looking for women CEO bloggers and her Berkshire Blog: a global point of reference weblog is the first I’ve come across. She’s been blogging since late 2004.
In January, 2006, she used this post to explain her reason for blogging: “I love the chance to write about things that catch my eye, without worrying about how they fit into a book, but the point of this blog is really to give our friends, colleagues (many of whom are friends, too), and customers (ditto) a look at what’s going on at 314 Main Street, Great Barrington.”
In that same post, she announced that others from the company were going to be contributing to the blog, but other than a few posts from her editor, Marcy Ross, that effort has apparently failed… a common occurrence with group blogging, for reasons I’ve detailed in this podcast. To her credit, she’s kept up her blogging, with unusual frequency for a small business owner.
The first thing I noticed from her recent posts: she’s very good at incorporating small amounts of storytelling into her blog entries. In this June 20 post, note how the first paragraph is the simple, engaging personal story that sets up the announcement/promo info in the second paragraph.
She even tells a teeny tiny story here, as a way of encouraging her blog visitors to read an article, something I rarely see in a media diet blog post. This is a perfect example of what I wrote in my Guide, “There’s hardly a blog post that can’t include some elements of storytelling. Imagine yourself talking to a colleague or friend about what it is you’re blogging and then bring that tone to your post.”
I could go on about other things I like about her blog, eg, her opinionating about publishing issues, her discussion of company projects in the works, her short personal blurbs about authors she knows. Lots to like about this blogger.
I’d like to see her write more about her employees. And I’d like to see more photos and images. She made a stab at using Flickr back in March but that evidently hasn’t worked. I understand why and that’s my rationale for helping some of my current clients learn to use the blogging application, Zoundry Blog Writer… which I’m using to compose this post.
[This profile is part of my ongoing Leaders who blog series that I began in June, 2006]
