Blogging

This week, both the “traditional” media and the blogosphere picked up on the topic of how, and where, to define the line between an individual’s professional role, and responsibility to his employer, and his private life.

I have some thoughts on what we should do, as individuals and as employers, to make all of this clearer.  Before you read what I think, please read (if you haven’t already) some of what has already been said. It will give you better context for my comments.

Get the Background

Traditional Media:

• From Associated Press: Firms Taking Action Against Worker Blogs 
• From CNET: FAQ: Blogging on the job 

And from the blogosphere, in no particular order:

• Media Guerilla: Putting Bloggers in a PR Headlock, Good Luck who introduced me to:
• If a Blogger Blogs in the Blogosphere… by Tom Foremski (SiliconValley Watcher)
• From NevOn: CNET’s guide to blogging misses the mark Commentary on the CNET article referenced above.

And The Technorati “Thing”

A Technorati employee’s blog posting on his personal blog and Technorati’s response. Here are some of the posts from various blogs on the topic, which you’ve probably seen elsewhere but are included here for those of my readers who haven’t.

• The Principal Players: Niall Kennedy, Community Manager at Technorati, Whose voice is it anyway? and David Sifry, Technorati CEO: Regarding Technorati’s Community Manager, Niall Kennedy 

Some commentary (by no means all!) from the blogosphere:

• From Buzz Marketing with Blogs: Technorati Policy Clarified 
• Russell Beattie: Taking Down Posts Doesn’t Work (found on The Red Couch)
• From Scoble over at The Red Couch: Dave Sifry and Niall Kennedy in lesson on corporate blogging Among other bits of good advice in this post, he repeats a rule I have long lived by, and not just for posts on the net – everything I say: “But, whenever I post I think about how I’ll justify my post to my boss, my wife, my readers, the execs, my coworkers. I imagine how that post will look on the front of the New York Times.”
• From Venture Chronicles: Technorati accused of blog censorship Short sweet and to the point. I particularly liked: “An employee should be free to express their views on any issue, but when the issue in question directly relates to their job or their company’s business interests then they are swimming in a shark tank without a cage.”

Agreed.

The interesting question is, what is the dividing line between our actions as employees, and our actions as private individuals. Let’s assume that the material in question is not related to the employer or its business interests, but merely the employee’s own expression. How far into our own lives does our role as an employee extend?

In the “old” days, before the Internet, life was much simpler. Seriously. 

There were fewer outlets for expression, and the media was predominantly controlled by profit-seeking corporations, not individuals (in jammies or otherwise). Of course, there were “underground” publications and alternative media, but they did not have the reach of the Internet. And they certainly weren’t available to just about everyone, at just about no cost.

It is a wonderful world that everyone can be a publisher, but now we have this new dilemma. Lots of people who can publish but not everyone understands the rules.

What are the accepted rules of behavior of the individual as an employee? What do they owe the company and what goes beyond the pale?

In my simpler time of no Internet and controlled media, a company had employees whose job it was to represent the company, mostly the executives, PR people and other spokes-persons. These employees were trained on how to present company messages AND themselves to the outside world. They also understood that their actions reflected on the company. That’s not to say there weren’t screw-ups, but they knew the rules.

Now, in our brave new world of blogging, the company isn’t putting its employees in the public eye and training them how to handle it. People are putting themselves in the public eye. Unfortunately, the media training and experience that prepares professional communicators for the fishbowl isn’t available to everyone. So it is not surprising that people have been blindsided by the fact that what they post in their blogs can have repercussions.

The advice in Scoble’s Red Couch post is excellent. Here are my additions: advice for individuals and recommendations for companies.

Advice/Individuals:

• Practice some common sense. As Scoble said, before you post, ask if you would want to read your post on the front page of the New York Times?   
• If you have a high profile role at your company, practice even more discretion, even in your personal blog. If you aren’t sure whether your role is high profile, don’t assume that it is NOT. This doesn’t mean that you have to stifle your opinions. You just have to be aware that your opinion may reflect on your employer and, right or wrong, the employer may respond. If you really still want to do that controversial post, you’ve got options. Do it anyway, and live with the potential consequences. Or consider doing an anonymous blog and still, no matter what, don’t violate the following rule:
• Don’t blog about confidential matters. If you aren’t sure what that means, get some clarification. It is worth it in the long run.
• Find out if your company has a blogging policy. If it doesn’t, it may be worthwhile to help it develop one. You’ll certainly know what’s in it.

Recommendations/Companies:

• Develop a blogging policy. Make sure you cover the policies for corporate-sponsored and sanctioned blogging as well as ANY expectations you have about employees’ personal blogs regarding your proprietary information, trademarks and legitimate business interests. And do this in conjunction with employees you have who are already blogging. Don’t do it in a legal vacuum. Your policy will be better and your employees will have a stake in making it successful.
• Clearly identify employees who you consider ambassadors of your brands. It used to be that only executives had high profile public roles. Now, many employees in staff positions, particularly in tech companies, have high profiles as employees of their company. As a result, their opinions and actions may be interpreted as reflective of the company. Not fair perhaps, but it is the reality. It is a mutual responsibility: the company should tell them it views them as such, and employees in public or even semi-public roles should find out if their role requires different behavior. It’s just common sense.
• If what your employees say about the firm in their personal blogs is important to you, and it should be, give them some communications training. You really can’t prevent them from having a blog, or saying they work for your firm, or even writing about their day at work (within reason), unless they have explicitly agreed to this higher degree of confidentiality in their employment agreement.

  BUT: You can help them by giving them tools to understand the communications process a bit better. It might make them better writers, and that can ONLY be for the good J 

  I wish companies would offer something (even just a dreaded Powerpoint) to all employees, but I think communications training is REQUIRED for all employees from whom the company wants a higher degree of discretion as well as anyone who is blogging for the company.

If you’ve noticed the theme in all of this, top marks. This is all just simple common sense. Just a little bit will go a long way toward helping us handle the fuzzy dividing line where our professional identities end and our personal lives begin.   

NOTE: if you see an earlier version of this somewhere, I hit Publish Now when I meant to Save Draft. I caught it right away but who knows….. My apologies as there was a lot of funky formatting that I hadn’t fixed yet. Anyway, I deleted the old version because it was just too hard to fix the mess, but the content was all the same!