Corporate Blogging Policies and Guidelines for Employees

Employee Blogging Guidelines

Do you want to encourage your employees to blog? Do your employees have a Corporate Blogging guide? Do they know what is expected of them? Do they realise that blogging as a company employee carries certain responsibilities.

Corporate Blogging Endeavours

Having a simple company blog and encouraging employees to blog about their company, its products, and their work within the company has to be a good thing. It lets the employee feel part of the extended family and opens the day-to-day workings of the company to the public.

When blogging on behalf of the company there are three endeavours employees should keep in mind:

• Endeavour to raise the visibility of the company.
• Endeavour to make a contribution to the industry.
• Endeavour to give the public an overview of life within the company.

Start with a Blogging Service

The easiest way to get a simple corporate blog up and running is to use one of the free third-party blog hosting sites such as Blogger.com or WordPress.com. Other blog hosting sites such as TypePad.com and SquareSpace.com charge a nominal fee. If you want a company website and blog then I would recommend WordPress.org which is also free. See my article, “Where to register domain names“.

• Note: Some of the free blog services run ads as a way to offset their costs. If you use such a service you have no control over the ads promoted. On the other hand if you host your own blog using WordPress.org you can avoid advertising altogether or participate in a service like Google’s AdSense and earn a little money from your blog.
• You may want to including a disclaimer on your corporate blog:
  “The posts on this blog are provided ‘as is’ with no warranties and confer no rights. The opinions expressed on this site are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent those of the employer.”

Corporate Blogging Guidelines

Here is a simple set of corporate blogging guidelines to help bloggers know what is expected of them when blogging on behalf of the company.

• You own your content. Blog entries legally belong to you. They represent your thoughts and opinions.
• Write as yourself. Use your real name, don’t write anonymously or under a pseudonym. This adds credibility and promotes accountability. Don’t be afraid to be yourself.
• Speak in the first person. Use your own voice; bring your own personality to the forefront; say what’s on your mind.
• Be Interesting. Writing good content is hard work. Fortunately, if you know what you’re talking about, you’re probably going to be interesting. Successful bloggers expose their personality, people like to know what kind of a person is writing. Just remember, a blog is a public place and you should try to avoid embarrassing yourself, your readers or the company.
• Be responsible. You assume full responsibility and liability for all actions arising from your posts. Be the first to respond to your own mistakes. If you make an error, say so, and correct it quickly. If you modify an earlier post, make it clear that you have done so.
• Write relevant. Whether you know it or not, you are an expert. You have a unique perspective on the Company based on your talents, skills, and responsibilities. People want to hear about that perspective.
• Write often. In order to develop a following, you should try to write on a regular basis, this could be daily or weekly. The important thing is consistent posting. Most blogging platforms allow scheduling of posts, so you could for example, post every Wednesday at 10:00.
• When to write. You may write on Company time, provided it doesn’t become excessive and doesn’t interfere with your job assignments and responsibilities.
• Quality Matters. Always use a spell-checker and possibly a thesaurus. You don’t have to be a brilliant writer to succeed at blogging, but you should make an effort to be clear and concise.
• Be nice. Avoid attacking other individuals or companies. This includes fellow employees, customers or competitors. You are welcome to disagree with others, provided your tone is respectful. If in doubt, “sleep on it”, talk it over with your colleagues and ask them to review your work before you post it.
• Be nice 2. Find out who else is blogging or publishing on the topic your writing about and cite them. The Internet thrives on links.
• Keep secrets. Whilst we believe deeply in free speech, do not disclose sensitive, proprietary, confidential, or financial information about the Company, other than what is publicly available in corporate press releases. This includes revenues, profits, forecasts, and other financial information related to specific authors, brands, products, product lines, customers, operating units, etc. If in doubt, check with your supervisor.
• Financial Rules There are all sorts of laws about what we can and can’t say, business-wise. Talking about Company revenue or share price is apt to get you, or the company, or both, into legal trouble.
• Respect copyrights. For your protection, do not post any material that is copyrighted unless (a) you are the copyright owner, (b) you have written permission of the copyright owner to post the copyrighted material, or (c) you are sure that the use of any copyrighted material is permitted by the legal doctrine of “fair use”.
• No endorsements. You may not use the Company’s name to endorse or promote any product, opinion, cause or political candidate.
• Obey the law. Do not post material which could be considered obscene, defamatory, profane, libellous, threatening, harassing, abusive, hateful, embarrassing to another person or entity, or violates the privacy rights of another.
• Obey the law 2. Do not post material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, or any other computer code that is intended to damage, interfere with, or surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data, or information.
• Violations of Terms. You acknowledge that the Company does not pre-screen or regularly review posted content, but that it shall have the right to remove at its sole discretion, any content that it considers violates these guidelines.
• Company Handbook. As a condition of your employment, you agreed to abide by the rules of the Company Handbook. This also applies to your corporate blogging activities. We suggest you take time to review the section entitled, “Employee Responsibilities”.