I was reading Andy’s Blog today and he makes reference to a yet to be released article in Inc Magazine about challenges CEO’s will face in 2006, Andy also quotes from this Inc article
"… they’re likely to find that they have two concerns: one, whether they need to launch a corporate blog to get their message out, and, two, what the blogosphere is saying about them."
This just got me to thinking over on to something else…what should the rules of employee blogs be? I’ve got 3 employees whom have industry related blogs (I’m not going to go into what my "rules" have been (if any) with these), but I do want to know what you think about employee blogs in general.
For any company:
What do you think the rules should be on employee blogs?
Should there be employee blogs?
Should there be any rules at all?
4 Responses
1. Feel lucky when posting.
2. Don’t be evil.
3. Don’t slam the competition but politely and honestly explain your point of view.
4. Don’t publish the pay roll, the budget, and the balance sheet but talk about everything else.
5. Have a disclaimer linking to your CEO’s blog – s/he sets the standards by example.
Don’t harm the company materially or by reputation (that should cover most stuff)
If they are writing for the blog on paid company time then you have a right to censor them. If it is both personal and company time it could get sticky.
At a minimum seperate the time so they get paid properly and cant hem and haw in the future.
Other then that imho let them talk it up, as we know content is where it is at. 🙂
Peace R.L.
You’ve asked good questions. To answer them, however, I think companies first have to answer a different question:
Are we willing to make the leap to transparency?
Blogs challenge organizations because they further hasten the spread of information. In my opinion, it is futile for companies to think that they can hide their competition from their customers forever, and that they can hide negative news from key stakeholders indefinitely.
Before a company can set their formal blogging policies, they really need to think about their brand, and determine the level of public exposure they’re comfortable having that doesn’t come from the PR department.
These answers will guide the blog policy which will be different for every company. For the most part, employee blog rules should prohibit them from portraying their company in a negative light by virtue of association. For example, if a bank employee puts up a blog supporting the illegal download of music and references that bank as his or her employer that may have a negative impact on the bank’s brand. That should not be allowed.
I do think rules are needed, and I do think employee blogs should be allowed if only because employees will blog whether their employer condone it or not.
I enjoy your blog Jim, Happy New Year!
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