"Free-expression can be costly when bloggers bad-mouth jobs."--Washington Post

When it comes to employee blog use, there is no way to guarantee a 100% risk-free environment.  Whether blogging at work or home, even the most conscientious employees are prone to accidents and missteps.  And there is always a chance that a rogue employee will intentionally publish blog content that creates legal, regulatory, security, or other problems for the organization.

To help limit liability, I advise my ePolicy Institute, www.epolicyinstitute.com, clients to develop and implement comprehensive blog rules and policies that address issues including content, language, confidentiality, copyright, defamation, privacy, monitoring, compliance, personal use, retention, regulatory rules, and disciplinary action, among other key issues.

Blog policies are not required by law, but they certainly can help keep your organization out of legal hot water. 

Consider incorporating the following 7 best practices, excerpted from my new book Blog Rules (Amacom 2006, www.amanet.org) into your organization's blog policy program to help maximize employee compliance while minimizing business, legal and regulatory risks.

Seven Tips for Effective Blog Policies.

1.  Establish written policy governing your organization.  According to the 2006 Workplace E-mail, IM & Blog Survey from American Management Association, www.amanet.org, and The ePolicy Institute, www.epolicyinstitute.com, 7% of companies have policy in place to control employees' blog use and content. 

2.    Establish a policy governing employees' personal blog use.  AMA/ePolicy Institute research reveals that 7% of organizations have established rules governing the content employees may post on their personal home-based blogs.  Make sure your employees understand that all of the companies rules and policies (language and content, ethics, confidentiality, harassment/discrimination, etc.) apply--regardless of whether they are blogging during business hours or on their own time and equipment. 

3.  Guard personal and professional secrets.  Enforce rules banning the posting of confidential information on business blogs and employees' personal blogs. Do not allow employee-bloggers to embarrass or otherwise harm the company. Make sure employees understand what information the organization considers confidential, proprietary, intellectual property, trade secret, etc.   

4.  Prohibit anonymous blogging. Don't allow employees to post anonymously by using pseudonyms or fake screen names.  Anonymity may tempt some people to write offensive, irresponsible or defamatory comments.  On business blogs, employees should identify themselves as company employees. If employees write about the company on personal blogs (with management's permission) they should make clear their affiliation with the company--and add a disclaimer that the blogger's comments are her own, and are not necessarily shared by the company.

5.  Inform bloggers how to handle media inquiries.  According to the Annual Euro RSCG Magnet and Columbia University Survey, 28% of journalists rely on blogs for their daily reporting.  Another 70% of reporters use blogs to find story ideas, conduct research and uncover breaking news. Employee-bloggers are likely to be contacted directly by the media.  Use your blog policy to instruct bloggers how to handle media calls.

6. Impose financial rules.  Publicly traded companies must be careful that employee-bloggers don't accidentally or intentionally disclose confidential financial data at the wrong time to the wrong audience.  Apply this rule to business and personal blogs.

7. Require employee-bloggers to formally acknowledge blog rules and policy.  Require all employees to sign and date a written acknowledgment form, confirming that they have read the policy, understand it, and agree to comply with it or risk disciplinary action, up to and including termination.  In the event of a lawsuit, you may need these signed acknowledgments to confirm that the company takes blog policy and employee compliance seriously.

Thank you for allowing me to share information about blog risks & rules, policies & procedures this week!

For additional information about blog, e-mail, IM, and Internet risks, policies and best practices, please visit The ePolicy Institute at www.epolicyinstitute.com.  Watch for our information-rich, tip-loaded blog to go online in early 2007.

Happy Holidays!

 

 

 

Blog Rules:

12 Best Practices to Keep You in Business--and Out of Court--with Your Corporate Reputation Intact

 

 

From the millions of people with a conviction or cause to share, to the thousands of corporations looking for a more effective and reliable way to build trust-based relationships with customers, it's no wonder than an astonishing  80,000 new blogs appear daily.  Everyone, it seems, is blogging.

 

Any organization that fails to take advantage of this exciting new platform (while also protecting itself from legal liabilities and critical or defamatory remarks) is sure to suffer.

 

To help business bloggers maximize their ability to communicate, while minimizing blog-related risks, I offer 12 best-practices-based tips excerpted from my new book Blog Rules (Amacom 2006, www.amanet.org).

 

Blog Rule #1: The blog is an electronic communications powerhouse. Blogs are likely to have greater impact on business communications and corporate reputations than e-mail, IM, and traditional marketing-oriented Web sites combined.

 

Blog Rule #2:  Business blogs are not necessary or appropriate for every organization. Evaluate benefits and assess risks before leaping into the blogosphere.

 

Blog Rule #3:  Savvy business owners and executives must learn how to strategically and successfully manage the blogosphere today. Or risk potentially unpleasant and expensive consequences tomorrow. 

 

Blog Rule #4:  It’s the casual, conversational, anything-goes nature of the blog that makes it both so appealing to blog writers and readers.  It also what makes blogging so potentially dangerous to business.

 

Blog Rule #5: An organization without an external blog program may risk losing position, market share, reputation, and sales to tech-savvy competitors.  With one new blog created every second, some of your competitors have likely recognized—and tapped into—the power of the blogosphere. 

 

Blog Rule #6:  The strategic management of blogs or any other electronic business communications tool begins with the establishment of written rules and policies governing usage and content. 

 

Blog Rule #7:   A business blog opens the organization up to potential disasters.  Risks include the loss of trade secrets, confidential information, and intellectual property; negative publicity, damaged reputations, and public embarrassment; workplace lawsuits alleging copyright infringement, defamation, sexual harassment, and other claims; court sanctions, legal settlements, and regulatory fines; and lost employee productivity.

 

Blog Rule #8: Management, technology, and the legal system have not yet caught up with the potential benefits and risks of business blogging.

 

Blog Rule #9:  Strategic blog management begins with the establishment of a clear objective.  In other words, why does your organization want to blog?

 

Blog Rule #10:  Don’t allow IT (or legal, records management, or human resources) to dictate your business blog program.  Work as a team to implement rules, policies, and procedures based on the best practices detailed in Blog Rules.

 

Blog Rule #11:  Require employees to sign a confidentiality agreement to protect trade secrets and confidential data belonging to the organization, employees, customers, business partners, and other third parties.  Cover blog posts and comments published on the organization’s business blogs, employees’ personal blogs, and other external blogs, as well. 

 

Blog Rule #12:  Use discipline to maximize employee compliance with blog rules, policies, and procedures. Put blog content and usage rules in writing, and stress the fact that the organization’s rules and policies apply regardless of whether employees are blogging at the office or at home on their own time and equipment.  Inform employees that any violation of the organization’s rules and policies may result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination.

 

Please join me tomorrow to learn more about the risks and rules, policies and procedures designed to help make your organization's blog program as clean, compliant and communicative as possible.

 

Blogs Create Evidence That Must Be Retained & Managed, Feds Announce on December 1

Does your company treat blog posts and comments like discoverable legal evidence that must be retained, archived, and  produced--quickly--in the event of a workplace lawsuit or regulatory investigation?  If not, now is the time to get your strategic blog management and business record retention policy and procedures in place.    

On December 1, 2006, the U.S. Federal Court implemented new rules governing the discovery of "electronically stored information."  The ruling makes clear that any type of electronically stored information (including writers' blog posts and readers' comments) can be subpoenaed and used as evidence (for or against your company) in the course of litigation. 

The ruling not only covers all current types of computer-based information, but it also is flexible enough to apply to any future technologies that may be developed down the road. To learn more, visit the U.S. Court's Federal Rulemaking website:   http://www.uscourts.gov/rules/congress0406.html.

97% of Employers Fail to Manage Blog Business Records

Only 3% of companies  currently have written policy in place to govern the retention of blog business records. That's a potentially costly oversight, considering that writers' posts and readers' comments create the electronic equivalent of DNA evidence. Fully 24% of organizations have had employee e-mail subpoenaed and another 15% of employees have gone to court to battle lawsuits triggered by e-mail,  according to the 2006 Workplace E-Mail, Instant Messaging & Blog Survey from American Management Association and my firm, The ePolicy Institute, www.epolicyinstitute.com. 

It's only a matter of time until blog posts and comments begin to play an equally significant evidentiary role in litigation and regulatory investigations.  To help prevent the likelihood of blog-related disaster from striking tomorrow, put a blog usage, content, and retention policy in place today. 

Failure to Produce Electronic Evidence Costs Employers Millions

In recent years, we've seen many companies slapped with multi-million-dollar (and occasionally billion-dollar) jury awards, legal settlements, court sanctions, and regulatory fines because of their failure to retain, archive, and turn over e-mail business records when ordered to do so.  There is no reason to assume that employers who fail to retain and archive blog records won't be hit with equally robust penalties.     

What Exactly Is a Blog Business Record?

As detailed in my book Blog Rules (Amacom, 2006), www.amanet.org, if employees are blogging about your company, its products, services, transactions, suppliers, customers, executives, and staff, then chances are they are creating electronic business records that the organization is obligated to save, store, and (in the event of a lawsuit) hand over to litigators. 

If employee-bloggers are corresponding with readers via e-mail, then they may be creating even more business records that must be retained and archived.  If your organization allows readers to post comments on business blogs, then another potential cache of business records is being compiled.

Blog Rule #13:  Treat blog posts and comments as business records that must be retained, archived, and readily available to courts or regulators in the event of a workplace lawsuit or regulatory investigation.

Coming This Week

I hope you'll join me this week, as I discuss blog risks, blog rules, and blog best practices designed to help minimize organizational risks and maximize blog communications. 

  

 

 

   

Please join us this week December 11-15, for a blog program: Blog Rules, with discussion leader, Nancy Flynn

ABOUT THE TOPIC:

Blogs have become as essential as email and newsletters. But with news stories about everything from embarrassment in the blogosphere to legal action... blogging carries risks. Know how to protect yourself and your company. Blog safely.

ABOUT THE DISCUSSION LEADER:

Nancy Flynn is the author of the new book, Blog Rules: A Business Guide to Managing Policy, Public Relations, and Legal Issues from Amacom Books. Nancy is founder and executive director of The ePolicy Institute, and author of the books: The ePolicy Handbook and E-Mail Rules.

I've had a policy since September 2005 of tracking and talking about what's going on in New Orleans every place I make a public appearance - even at my events on Internet marketing.

In fact, I put on a special marketing workshop this past November in New Orleans for some of my clients as a fund raiser. Part of the workshop involved briefing my clients on current conditions there.

Since this is a video discussion, let's consider this question:

What would have happened to the people of New Orleans had there no been video and live video news?

I think it's safe to say the death toll would have been many, many times than what it was.

The vicious idiots in charge of FEMA, Homeland Security and other government agencies responsible for rescue and relief efforts would have gone on patting each other on the back for the "heck of a job" they were doing until the corpses piled as high as the Superdome.

So I say "thank God" for video. Video, and Internet video,  can still play a roll  in helping get the word out about this and other travesties.

(Maybe if video had existed in the 1940s and someone had been able to sneak footage out of the concentration camps, some of those victims might have been saved too.  Who knows?)

Anyway, what has happened in the last year plus since this government-induced disaster?

Some numbers:

* 102,000 families are still living in FEMA trailers (which by the way were sold to US taxpayers at THREE TIMES their retail value.) And that doesn't count the hundreds of thousands of people who are living in other cities and states, unable to return to their homes.

* As of November 1, of the $10.4 billion granted by the federal government to rebuild Louisiana, only 18 - yes 18! - of the 77,000 homeowners who have applied for rebuilding aid have received any.

* Many New Orleans public schools still do not have drinking water for the children - this in a tropical climate - and private contract security guards outnumber teachers in many schools.

From a 12/6/06 article in the New York Times:

"People are being left to fend for themselves, while being hampered if not prevented, from fending for themselves." Raymond A. Jetson, the Louisiana Family Recovery Corps."

What does all this have to do with Internet marketing?

Thoreau once asked: "What's the use of a house if you don't have a tolerable planet to put it on?"

I ask what kind of a country are we if we throw our own injured citizens to the dogs when we have all the resources needed to help them back on their feet.

What can you do:

1. Educate yourself  -  Don't buy the party line that New Orleans brought its problems on itself. If that's true, do we intend to leave people in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami and other places subject to catastrophe in the rubble if they suffer a reversal too?

Fact: Katrina didn't damage New Orleans, the collapse of the federal levees did. The levees weren't even breached by flood waters. They crumbled because of poor construction by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Fireman from the high vantage point of an office building filmed what actually happened to the levees - and when - and were ordered not to show the video to anyone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwMvC5QU194&mode=related&search=

2. Talk about it - The average person thinks New Orleans and the Gulf are back to normal and everything's fine. It's not. It's an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe and who's suffering the most? The young. The elderly. The handicapped.  Working people at the bottom of the economic ladder. It's a national disgrace.

(I don't have the space to go into it here, but Big Oil is culpable as well. They've wreaked tremendous ecological damage on the bayous that used to modify the effect of storms on the region. They've also skillfully managed to keep there role in the catastrophe out of the news media.)

3. Visit New Orleans - The core area of interest to visitors with its incomparable food and music is back online. Go, enjoy yourself, spend and tip lavishly - especially in locally owned businesses of which there are many.

The people who are back in New Orleans are the ones who want to be back there. They are bloodied but not bowed.  They're brave, resourceful folks who love their city and are dedicated to restoring it.  Make no mistake,  the city is a traumatized place, but it's also the home to a positive and creative energy the kind of which you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere else in our mall and suburbia-based nation.

Bottom line: New Orleans is an important American city - historically, culturally, economically - and for the rest of us morally.

"Am I not a man? Am I not a brother?"

This slogan appeared during the movement to abolish slavery. We need revive it as it applies to New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf.

When you make your trip to New Orleans to see for yourself...

For music: Frenchman Street. Half a dozen smoking music clubs on one block. No cover charge. Just throw something meaningful in when they pass the hat.

For food: It's hard to go wrong.  Ask the locals for their secret spots. They'll tell you with pride.  The web's a good place to start researching.

By the way, the IAOC's own Steve O'Keefe is a peerless resource on the wonders of the city.

Question: How long should an online video be?

Answer: As long as it needs to be.

If your goal is to go "viral," then shorter is better. If you look at the viral hits on Google and YouTube, many are under one minute long. 

Why?

Is it because modern living has reduced people's attention spans to fruit fly proportions? No. It's because the shorter the video, the higher the odds that  viewers will watch to the end and push the "share" button.  It's the pushing of the "share" button that makes a video viral. That's the whole game. Of course, the video has to be a "wow!" to large numbers of viewers to stimulate this response.

But before we shout "hallelujeh" for viral videos, let's take a look at some of today's winners on Google Video
and their suitability as advertising vehicles:

1. "White and Nerdy" - a professionally produced music video
2. "Sex Accident" - less than zero
3. "PS3 vs. Wii" -  a professionally produced ad
4. "Octopus escaping through one inch hole" - dubious at best
5. "Fitness" - less than zero
6. "The Birth" - a comedy skit - dubious at best
7. "Guy pwned by girl" - less than zero
8. "Best penalty ever" - weak maybe
9. "Stars are Blind" - zero
10. "Quarters" - a professionally produced ad

Three of the winners came from professionals and were made to promote a specific product.

Four have no advertising value and at all and three of them would send any sane advertiser running in horror. One is a very weak maybe and the other two are of dubious value at best.

YouTube et. al. could theoretically run an ad before or after the three winners, but that would be strange because they are already advertisements for something.

The remaining seven range from incredibly weak advertising vehicles to postively radioactive in their unsuitability.

So tell me again why we as advertisers are so excited about viral videos?

Back to the question that started all this: How long should your online videos should be?

As long as it takes to tell your action-motivating story to your targeted prospect. If someone is interested (i.e. a potential customer) they will take in all the relevant information you have to offer. Within my own sphere of interest, I have no qualms about watching a 20, 30, even 60+ minute video online, but if something's not suitable for me, 7 seconds is too long and I'm not going to push the "share" button.

Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock.

Why?

Because like Exxon is in the oil business, Google is in the traffic business.

Google's own stats showed that video was becoming an "item" on the Internet. Without ever-growing traffic (and monetization of that traffic), the share price of Google is going to die a gruesome death. YouTube had the most Internet video traffic (by far), so Google did what it had to do.

How did YouTube grow so fast?

Strangely, I don't see this discussed in many places. "Community" is bandied about as a reason a lot and I'll get to that in a bit, but the real reason YouTube took off so fast was they took all the friction out of Internet video publishing. They made it free, they made it easy, they made it fast (ever try to upload a video to Google?), and they weren't squeamish about copyright issues. So they got to critical mass first

That's why YouTube won.  It's also why Flickr and MySpace won too. But there's a catch.

These victories are in no way predictive of commercial success. I know that advertisers and digital pundits are drooling over the "eyeballs" these services represent, but experience says there never has been - and never will be -  an automatic conversion of traffic to monetary value.

Amazon's traffic is valuable because it's the traffic of book buyers looking to buy books. eBay's traffic is valuable because it's the traffic of online buyers who like to shop for bargains and hard-to-find items. Google's traffic is valuable (more valuable than Yahoo's and MSN which have more traffic) because they've figured out a better way to monetize search activity.

How do you monetize YouTube?  To answer that question, you have to ask another question: What the heck is YouTube anyway?

YouTube is a place for people to upload their videos. That's it. Yes there is a community aspect to it, but it's a very small fraction of the action. Flickr is the same thing. Both these companies remind me of Tripod which was one of the first companies that made it easy to put up a web site. Yes, founder Bo Peabody got rich - by selling stock. He never successfully monetized the business and to his credit he admits it.

Have Bo and and Chad and Steve (YouTube) and Caterina and Stewart (Flickr) done something socially useful? Absolutely. Did they create self-perpepuating traffic machines? Yes. Have they created properties that can monetize traffic optimally? No.

Why not? Because if I'm using a service to post and share stuff so my friends and family can see it, they and I are not there to be sold to. That's not what we're there for.  Also, we're far too diverse a group to target. (Unless you're selling film printing to Flickr members. Kodak should have bought Flickr, but that's another story.)

Community and traffic do not equal a blue sky monetization opportunity.

CB radio was a community and a big one at the height of its popularity.  Theoretically, there were a lot of eye balls (or ear lobes) to harvest, but I don't even have to point out how preposterous the idea is of interrupting people's commuciations with each other with ads.

But somehow on the web, we think traffic and "community" equals profits.

More examples of how it doesn't work:

A local bar is a community "where everybody knows your name." How do you monetize that? You sell drinks. OK. How about using the "power of community" to leverage sales messages? Maybe for the latest flavored vodka, but that's about it.

The old computer bulletin boards (BBSs) were communities with a capital "C." Ask the people who were around in those days how easy it was to monetize BBS traffic. It was impossible. The money to be made from that community was selling BBS software to board operators - and that was it.

So what am I saying?

I'm saying there's a lot more to building a money-making Internet venture than getting a lot of traffic and building a strong online community. Community is nice and it can be harnessed for self-sustaining growth - but by itself without other factors, it's near meaningless from a commercial point of view.

When I hear talk about monetizing Web 2.0 in general (as opposed to very specific cases), I'm reminded of a funny experience I had at the height of the dotcom craze. I went into the bathroom of a pretty nice restaurant near Grand Central. There staring up from the drain of the urinal was an ad for a web site. As I did what people do when they're standing at a urinal, I asked myself: "What could this company possibly have been thinking when it bought this ad space?"

Bottom line: Some traffic is just not destined to be monetized.

There don't seem to be too many of us around who were involved in commercial Internet ventures in 1994.

I'm talking about the pre-Google, pre-eBay, pre-Amazon, and even pre-Yahoo days.  (Yahoo didn't "turn pro" until 1995.)

First, people who were serious about the commercial potential of the Internet back in those days were few and far between.  Second, many of those who were involved in those early days have dropped out one way or another -  either cashed out or moved onto another field.

Today, of course, millions of people are professionally involved with Internet ventures of various sorts, from the warehouse workers at Amazon to venture capitalists in Silicon Valley.

This sounds like a pretty mature industry at this point, so why do I say that "it's 1994 all over again."

One word: video.

Transmitting video on the Internet has been tehnically possible since the beginning. It just wasn't practical. Today it is. Not only is it practical, the requirements have become trivial. Video is the new paper. A very strange concept to wrap your head around at first, but a pretty accurate assessment of what's happened in the last year.

Paper itself used to be relatively rare and expensive. It didn't become a commodity until the second half of 19th century and when it did the world saw an explosion of newspaper publishing and the invention of new-fangled "inventions" like magazines and catalogs. (Look it up. These last two publication types which seem like they've been with us forever are less than 150 years old.)

Enter Internet video. It's now cheaper to shoot, edit and distribute a modest video (via the Internet) than it is to write a report and bring it down to Kinko's to make a couple of hundred copies.

So not only is video the new paper. It's cheaper than paper.

How many people really *get* this? How many people know what to do about it? How big is the gap between the tidal wave of demand for Internet video publishing and the number of people who, currently, can pull it off with panache?

See what I mean? It's 1994 all over again.  Enjoy!

================================================

Hi. My name is Ken McCarthy. I'm your guest blogger this week.

You can learn more about me at kenmccarthy.com or read further ravings about Internet video at systemvideoblog.com.

But before you do that, I'd love to hear what you think of my proposition.

I'm Steve O'Keefe, co-host of "This Week on IAOCblog.com" and this week I dropped the ball!

I failed to introduce our topic and guest in a timely manner. So please forgive me and, more importantly, please join me in welcoming Internet marketing pioneer Ken McCarthy to our blog!

Ken McCarthy organized the first conference ever on Internet marketing -- in 1994 in San Francisco.  One of his students from that era, Rick Boyce, played an instrumental role in popularizing the banner ad at Hotwired. Ken also was very early to the pay-per-clik game, recognizing PPC not only as a source of traffic, but also as a superb testing and marketing research tool. Today, Ken is director of The System Seminar -- an online marketing training program -- and runs the "Looking at Video on the Web" blog at <http://www.systemvideoblog.com/>. Ken will be discussing such subject's as Google's purchase of YouTube and what it means for online marketers.

Ken McCarthy -- welcome to IAOCblog.com!