Blog Guidelines

When creating an organisational blog it is always advisable to create a set of blog guidelines. Blog guidelines are a good way of providing guidance and direction to employees who may be using a corporate blog for the first time. They are a point of reference for blog users to consult should they require clarification about what issues they should consider when about to use a blog in their company for the first time. An organisation that is using a blog for the first time may find that their blog guidelines might change through feedback and suggestions for improvement/modification from indviduals using the blog. It is important for employees to become familiar with their organisation’s or department’s blog guidelines prior to commencing blogging. Blog guidelines should be written in such a way that they encourage employees to blog, they should help to ‘sell the blog’ and reaffirm the purpose of the blog. Knowing your company and your organisational members is important when establishing blog guidelines. When creating a set of company blog guidelines it is important to ensure that the guidelines do not omit a sense of restriction in terms of use though they should also allow employees to openly share ‘best practice’, thoughts and ideas in an open and unconfined way.

Some good examples of corporate blog guidelines can be found via:

IBM’s “Blogging Policy and Guidelines” courtesy of Debbie Weil’s website. Other examples of employee blog guidelines are those highlighted by Jeremy Zadodny for Yahoo employees; Sun Microsystem’s “Guidelines on Public Discourse” and Feedster’s “Corporate Blogging Policy.”

Useful books that cover aspects of corporate blog guidelines are:

• “Blog Rules: A Business Guide to Managing Policy, Public Relations, and Legal Issues” by Nancy Flynn.
• “Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging” by John Cass.