Should CIOs blog? Should they tweet, or otherwise engage with social media? It is a question that IT executives should increasingly ask themselves, as they attempt to fight their corner within organisations that can be sceptical about IT as a function.

Blogging, once a pastime for celebrity followers, cookery buffs, and movie fans, has increasingly become a corporate activity as companies understand and embrace the appeal of social media. It can be used as a way to encourage conversations between executives and others in the industry, and with customers. It can be used as a platform to hammer home a particular message, or to promote a particular category of product. For CIOs, who in many cases are managing a transition for the IT function within their companies, it can be a useful way to make themselves heard. It is a pursuit followed by several high-profile CIOs, including Vivek Kundra, the CIO for the US Federal government.

For years now, IT departments have been considered a cost centre within organisations. IT executives constantly have had to battle boards that are unwilling to spend money on what they see as a cash drain on the organisation. However, in the last couple of years, some companies have begun maturing to the point where they see IT as a potential centre for revenue. The savvy CIO understands this transition, and the associated requirement for a more strategic conversation between the IT function and others in the business. If organisations can be persuaded to view IT strategically – as a business partner which can help to drive growth in new and interesting directions – then CIOs can manoeuvre themselves and their departments into a more advantageous position.

A blog is one way to help demonstrate thought leadership both within an organisation and further afield. It also helps to promote a CIO personally as a strategic thinker who can be relied upon for a visionary approach. Here are our top tips to help new CIO bloggers to make their mark:

Break new ground

There are plenty of blogs that say nothing. An online platform for discussion that simply spouts conventional wisdom is almost worse than no blog at all, because it casts the author in the role of follower, rather than leader. Find something new to say, and say it in an engaging and entertaining way.

Find a cause

One way to demonstrate a visionary approach and develop a distinct personal voice is by embracing a subject as yours, and using your blog as online platform to help win over others in the industry. Think about broad topics, such as accountability, service culture, or operational security – something that will identify you as a pioneer with a passion.

Market your blog

Develop reciprocal links. Twitter your blog, and use the blog to expand on some of your Tweets. Comment on other peoples’ blogs and add value to the conversation, rather than blatantly using others’ comment sections as a means of promoting your own outlet. It is also a good idea to promote your blog in areas that will attract like-minded people. User group web sites and discussion boards might be a good example. Measuring and monitoring is part of a good marketing strategy. Services such as PostRank Analytics provide analytics services that can help you to monitor the coverage that your blog posts are getting across various social media services.

Blog short, and blog often

Short, snappy posts of a few paragraphs are better than infrequent, longer posts. Busy readers like smart, informative content that they can digest easily, but they also like to keep coming back for more. Infrequent blogs make you seem inconsistent, and will discourage people from subscribing.

Check in with HR

You don’t need to rock the boat to make some interesting waves. Even bloggers that do not promote themselves as employees of their particular company can be subject to disciplinary action if they overstep the mark and say things that may bring their employer into disrepute. It is therefore imperative that bloggers capitalising on their executive position within a particular company should ensure that what they are saying does not cause any conflict with that company’s message. It would be wise to check in with human resources and with other board members to get the go-ahead to blog as an executive within your organisation

Make your blog last longer than your job

Your vision should outlast your tenure at any one company, and so should your blog. Use a personal URL wherever possible, so that you can take your online location and your blogging history with you where ever you end up. Phil Windley started blogging when he was the CIO for the State of Utah, for example, but has since maintained it while in multiple positions and roles in the tech industry.

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• Vivek Kundra – A Conversation with Federal Government CIO Vivek Kundra (itc.conversationsnetwork.org)
• Staying Under the Corporate Umbrella in the Midst of the Social Media Storm (socialmediatoday.com)

Sometimes we get the opportunity to stand back from our most pressing work commitments, and gaze across the technology landscape at the changing Internet. We are frequently told that social media is a work in progress, and is still its infant phase. So let us ponder where it may go in the coming years. What follows is idle future pondering, scenarios almost. Please do not take the following as a forecast.

Twitter will not last without a radical reinvention

The increasing openness between networks – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter – will increase. Status updates on one will be seamlessly available to all, and also embedded in Microsoft Office applications, in collaboration tools, with SMS and so on. Status will be your thoughts, your retweets and @’s and also your car’s GPS location, and your appliances’ status (you’re washing machine will let you know when the cycle is complete). In fact the ability to display status updates will be as common a function as voice: completely commoditised.

Imagine a future Facebook interface which selects your real friends, the people you have interacted with on Twitter (or the like), or that have used common hashtags. Powerful algorithms will serve up only the status and conversations you are likely to find interesting. So what value in having an army of followers that is not listening to you? Will those that are currently trying to greedily acquire social capital now find their efforts were in vain?

I believe the effect of this evolution in social media interfaces (not the networks behind them) will help to cut down a lot of the noise.  In terms of which social media applications will dominate, the winning environment will be the one with the best usability and the best distribution because being a walled garden isn’t going to last.

Junk content will get worse before it gets better

Ever wonder what happens when you pay “writers” $1 for a 1000 word? It ends up as a How-To article on websites funded by Google Adsense revenues.  Many (not all) of these sites operate without any accountability whatsoever. What’s wrong with this? People are paid a pittance to plagiarise, cut corners or simply write with fake authority about subjects they know absolutely nothing about. Hundreds of millions of pages of junk content is clogging up Google. While bedroom publishers can build an economic model based on Adsense, don’t expect any self restraint.

This is not to say that How-To sites are the only ones manipulating or exploiting dubious online content to gain Adsense revenue. There are many technology sites doing this also, grabbing articles about popular brands and scurrilously twisting the meaning into something sensational. The best of the Adsense-funded sites are enthusiasts with not enough time to check facts; the worst simply don’t care at all about veracity. Their only interest is traffic because now they have a direct correlation between views and cents.

Eventually we will stop reading and the noise will quieten down

Looking further ahead – 10 years for instance – and the verbal diarrhoea generated by UGC and copy factories will be on the wane. As more and more of the content we will view becomes video, audio and spoken-word menus, our reliance on scanning stories for what we want to know will dissipate. Natural language-based search (sometimes called the semantic web) will make it easier for us to go direct to the information we want. Intelligent agents will learn our habits and interests and will interoperate with these search tools to ensure that each search is really, really targeted. And the widespread deployment of touchscreen interfaces – in work PCs, the living room TV, in-car computer and the home control panel – will gradually break our century-old connection to the keyboard. Intelligent speech, search, profiling and interfaces could combine to end the rule of the Word on the Internet

So which of these scenarios could come true? What other futures for media/social media can you envision?