If you are, start an executive blog. When a company is young, owners and top leaders do it all, including and especially bringing in the customers. But as a company grows, owners and leaders are pulled in a thousand directions. When you’re busy developing strategy, running operations, and putting out fires, there’s not much time for taking customers to lunch, listening to their ideas, and asking for their evaluation of how your company is doing.

And yet, understanding customers and building solid customer relationships are probably what made your business successful in the first place. If you lose touch with customers - what do you think is going to happen?

The beauty of a business blog is that it gives you the opportunity to reconnect with customers without losing control of your time. You can write a blog post any time you want - before you leave for the office, waiting for an airplane, or at 3:00 in the morning. Similarly, you can read and respond to customer comments whenever (and pretty much wherever) you have the time and energy to do so.

Granted, there’s no substitute for personal contact with customers. But a blog allows you to cover far more ground than relying exclusively on face to face customer interaction. How often do you have conversations with customers in the field? Once a day? Once a week? Once a month? With a blog, the day can come when a single post attracts ten or fifteen comments, leading to - who knows? - twenty or thirty conversations. If you’re doing ten posts a month … you do the math.

Here’s a recent post from the GM FastLane Blog. It was written by GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz. As of this writing, there are 77 comments attached to the post. That’s a lot of customer insight.

What do customers want more than anything in the world? They want to have the ear of the top dogs. They want conversations with people who can make big decisions. They want to listen to people who can articulate a vision and provide a perspective that will lead them to better decisions. In short, customers want you.

(Bob Lutz figured this out early on, and GM has been the beneficiary. But Mr. Lutz is no longer a voice in the wilderness. He has lots of company. Here’s a list of CEO blogs that contains plenty of names you’ll be familiar with.)