In large companies, the CEO has professional writers, a PR office, and lots of other skilled people on hand to help relay important messages to the right constituents. As a CEO of a start-up, you don’t have this luxury. You are always the company’s #1 Communicator.

Most important is to never underestimate this role. Silence isn’t golden; it’s dangerous. Even if there’s no good news to share, say something! At first, employees and investors will fill your silence with their fondest hopes. But once you’ve missed a single deadline, or something hasn’t gone according to plan, everyone will project their worst fears into the void.

Communication is even trickier now with social media. For example, one CEO stopped sending updates to investors, but chronicled his weeklong camping trips and conference excursions on Facebook, all while the company’s cash reserves (paying his five-figure-a-month salary) dwindled. As you can imagine, his investors followed his adventures with, how shall I say it, avid interest.

But enough about how not to communicate; here’s how a great entrepreneur CEO should communicate.

Communicate Vision, Strategy, and Direction…Often
As CEO, your primary duty is to set strategy and vision for the company, but it’s not enough to simply do so in your own mind. You have to impart that vision to your employees so they can help carry it out.

At a new employee orientation in 1991 — when Intuit had just 120 employees and one product — then-CEO Scott Cook made sure each of the fledgling company’s employees knew his plans for building the firm and what was needed to move the company toward the future he envisioned for it. It’s no coincidence that 20 years later Intuit has grown into a billion-dollar company with thousands of employees and dozens of products.

Communicate with Your Investors
Of course, most CEOs of start-ups find themselves far richer with ideas than money, so they also have to communicate their vision to potential investors. Part of effectively communicating includes efficiently communicating. You never know when you’ll need to give a quick pitch during an elevator ride, or be able to succinctly sell an investor on your idea’s economic or social return.

That’s how Tom Tuohy launched his non-profit, Dreams for Kids, in December 1989. A few weeks before Christmas, a friend told Tuohy of her grief that 54 children in the local homeless shelter wouldn’t be receiving Christmas gifts. In under a month, Tuohy organized a dozen volunteers and delivered gifts and food to the shelter on Christmas Eve, and Dreams for Kids was born.

Two decades later, Dreams for Kids helps empower economically disadvantaged and physically challenged kids in all kinds of ways (“Extreme Recess” is my personal favorite). Having helped more than 28,000 children, Tuohy’s ability to convince others to invest in Dream for Kids is crucial to its success.

Communicate with Your Customers
Customers also want to hear from the CEO. They want to know your product is better than your competitors’. They want to know you’ll still be in business to service that product a year from now. And they want to know you’re listening. Especially if you’re in a B2B business where purchases are expensive and the product is critical to your customer’s success.

The bottom line is that whether dealing with employees, investors, customers, partners, or even suppliers and vendors, a great entrepreneur CEO is always communicating. To master this job, you need to make sure you’re sending the messages that keep everyone moving together to make the company a success.

Stever Robbins is a serial entrepreneur, top-10 iTunes business podcaster (“The Get-it-Done Guy”), and CEO of Stever Robbins, Inc., an entrepreneurial consulting and coaching firm. He teaches at Babson College on building social capital. His first book, The Get-it-Done Guy’s 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More, is coming out this September.