CEO Blog Review: Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks

Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, maintains a personal online presence on his blog at www.blogmaverick.com. I was surprised to note that in terms of content, Cuban doesn’t often cover the Mavericks organization as a topic on the blog. He is a prominent businessman and entrepreneur, and his posts cover a wide variety of topics that all tie into the business world at large, from the Facebook brand to the state of the stock market. Cuban writes in a candid, concise manner. Though his posts are sometimes lengthy, his sentences are short and the overall flow of information makes for a quick read. His tone is relatable and friendly, yet still professional. However, there is no shortage of grammar mistakes scattered throughout the posts. Though this almost proves (unintentionally) that he is actually doing the writing himself, it does not help improve his personal brand or that of his organization, of which he is a major representative.

In comparison to the general PR effort within the Mavericks organization, Cuban’s blog lacks continuity with his organization and feels sporadic content-wise. The team’s tweets and website content are, as expected, very sports-centric. They also interact with fans directly by responding to them and using hashtags. The color and content across the website and social media channels are consistent. Cuban’s blog covers a seemingly random range of topics -- they all relate to business, but are very unrelated to each other. The design is fairly straightforward and bland, with very few graphics or user-friendly features. He does occasionally use bold type to indicate key points in his posts, but they could benefit from some editing, graphics and subheads or bullets to make the content more appealing to the casual Internet user.

Despite the improvements that could definitely be made, Cuban has a solid following on the blog. Avid fans leave lengthy comments and frequently share posts on Facebook and Twitter. He keeps a fairly frequent presence on the blog for a major management figure, posting once every couple of weeks. Though for some, this might seem too infrequent to maintain a solid following online, his popularity and celebrity status allow him to go for weeks or even months without posting while still keeping a wide readership.

The pros of keeping a CEO blog are tangible, as fans of a brand can put a familiar face to a major corporation. It is somewhat refreshing to read simple, candid remarks from a major leader of the business world. However, the cons are far-reaching as well. Cuban’s blog does not align very well with the Mavericks organization as a whole. While this particular case is not necessarily a detrimental situation, it could easily become a problem in the future. There are risks to putting the face of a company out for the public to scrutinize in such a direct way online. Small grammatical errors are one thing, but sharing one offensive remark or off-color opinion can result in a major PR crisis. Overall, I think Mark Cuban does a decent job in keeping a CEO blog, but improvements could certainly be made. Perhaps having a PR professional edit or at least proofread posts before publishing would be a good start in order to ensure continuity across platforms from the CEO and the organization.