If you’re a company executive, a company chief or an entrepreneur and you’re looking for a reason to start blogging, here’s an idea that can help align the forces beneath you along your leadership style and improve the flow of communication, while also potentially raising public awareness of your company and “Brand You”: Start a business blog.

You’re initial reaction, if you know anything about the blogosphere, is that there are already dozens upon dozens of such blogs out there. Many of the re-hash the latest business news or offer insights aligned with business partnerships or affiliate programs. These all have their place, but they’re not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about a personal blog that helps to define and support your ideas about how a business should run, including demonstrations and case studies that you, personally, have put into place through your own experiences. If you’re interested in talking about the latest breaking business news, don’t just re-hash it – analyze and frame it within your own beliefs and convictions. Define and explain your influences as a leader, let your readers know what’s on your management book shelf right now – better yet, let them know what’s actually sitting on your nightstand, as that will give a far better indication of where your mind is at.

Are you afraid of giving away company secrets? Listen, if your competition cares that much about your next moves, the chances are they already have a pretty good indication of what they are. If they find out you have a copy of Fodor’s guide to China on your nightstand, it’ll do little than add some confirmation to something they probably already know. If you work for the kind of company that business writers love to follow and speculate on, letting them know you’re reading that book or thinking about global economies or whatever will only add to their speculative frenzy, resulting in more publicity for you.

The benefits of blogging this way are practically innumerable. If you let all of your employees and peers know about the existence of your blog, they’ll likely sneak a peak now and then. Letting them know that you just read a book by Seth Godin that set your mind on fire or that you think Peter Drucker is overrated gives them valuable insight into your core values, beliefs and management style that your presence alone will never convey. If I found out my boss were reading every Seth Godin book out there, I’d be at the bookstore at lunch doing the same if for no other reason than career-preservation. Would you rather have employees that you had to dictate your ideas to and coddle and prod as they tried to fish out exactly what you wanted from them, or employees who proactively tried to get on your same wavelength if for no other reason than to appear that they “get it”? Me too.

If you’re genuinely concerned about leaking corporate secrets, then at least set the blog up on your company’s internal intranet, away from the general public. It’s worth it alone for your co-workers to see. Doing so, however, misses a big opportunity – the chance that your ideas and thoughts will be picked up and heralded by some members of the public at large and spread virally with your name and company attached, thus enhancing your company’s public image as well as your own. By publicly blogging your ideas, you expose yourself to the world at large and invite them to comment on and revel in what you have to say. You also open yourself up to potential detractors and the skewing of your ideas. In truth, though, so long as you maintain a professional, yet personal, voice and stand by your convictions and are willing to listen only to those who have taken the time to rationally and intelligently analyze and criticize your ideas, you will have few detractors, and even those you do have will be lost in the noise of praise and good fellowship you promote.

You certainly won’t be the first to partake in such an experiment – folks like Mark Cuban, Tom Peters and Tim O’Reilly have already blazed this trail. That doesn’t mean you don;t have an audience. As I’ve already mentioned, if you have co-workers or people you manage, you have a built-in audience. If you have customers, they’ll care about what you have to say as well. If you have potential customers and leads, they too will want to know what you think – it can indeed make or break a sale.

The cost of operating a blog is negligable. Google-owned Blogger will allow you set up a blog for free in about five minutes. If you want to avoid ads and such completely, you can always pay for a TypePad account. Or, if you want complete control over your weblog, you can purchase a copy of Moveable Type or download the free WordPress blog software and install it on your own server, either connected to the Intenet at large or just to your internal team.

Updating a blog entry can be as easy as spending two minutes jotting off a six-line paragraph or as complex as spending an hour to write a full-blown article. Blogs are cherished for their brevity (this one is a poor example) so don’t be afraid to write in fairly incomplete sentences. As long as you get your point out in writing, that’s all that matters.

Most importantly, don’t let any personal qualms about your writing ability or the weakness of your ideas keep you from jumping in. Every idea is valuable so long as it’s shared. If you keep it to yourself, it’s worthless. As for your writing ability, you will struggle at first if you’ve never written professionally for a business journal, novel or even college newspaper. Press through it. Write your stuff down, close your eyes, hold your nose and hit the “Submit” button. They say a writer writes and that, truly, is the only way to become a better writer. Well, a blogger blogs and, so long as you stick with it, you will improve. It is, indeed, the only way you’ll improve.

If you want to improve your standing within your own company or within the business community at large, get blogging. If you need help getting started, drop me a line and let me know how I can help. And, of course, if what I’ve written here has encouraged you to get going, send me a link and I’ll post it here for all to see and help drive more traffic to you.

So, what are you waiting for? Get blogging!