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