Caveat blogger

Long before companies started to leverage blogging as a next generation CRM solution and/or a means for thought leadership, individuals were using blogging to meet their own needs and sometimes no needs at all. Not many other activities provide such an effective catharsis from the ups and downs of everyday life as blogging does. More than the emotional release that comes from putting words to word press, blogging offers, among other things, a way to store information, stay in touch with others, connect with like minded people, and even get discovered. Unfortunately for those who blog, that last part, the discovery, can be a double-edged sword – you might get more than you bargained for from your blog, i.e. fired.

As an employee who blogs and more often than not chooses to cover industry topics, I have seen first hand the benefits a blog can have both for me and for the company. I’ve also made mistakes with my blog. Luckily, I did not get dooced as a result, but that is only minor consolation for my having more than indirectly contributed to our not closing a large relationship. I got to keep my job and keep blogging. Many employees aren’t as fortunate, and many employers rightly worry about a similar situation happening in their company. Unfortunately, though, such defensive behavior almost guarantees that companies will miss out on the tremendous upside. Employee bloggers is a topic with two distinct audiences, companies and individuals, and this piece does its best to cover each.

Just in case you didn’t read last week’s tome on the first half of the corporate blog landscape, i.e. company run blogs, it’s worth taking a step back and reiterating why we chose to break up the corporate blog landscape into the two distinct parts, i.e. company blogs and employees who blog. The answer, simply enough, is that at their core, they are very different animals, and companies that try to apply the same mental framework to both will fail at both. As we mentioned last week, and as I mentioned at our OMMA Workshop, a company blog is a controlled environment, the official say of the company. An employee blog on the other hand is more like peer-to-peer software; it’s a decentralized and distributed means for the company to achieve thought leadership and industry influence. Both company blogs and employee’s blogs can, and do, exist independent of one another; and, engaging the blogosphere does not mean choosing between the two. It simply means understand the rules – controlling where you can and letting go in others.

What types of employees have blogs? Judging from those that I read, and those I have come across doing some research, the answer is all levels. Anyone from secretaries to CEO’s maintains an active blog, one that they will contribute to at least weekly. Some of the better known employee bloggers are technologists, and in many ways this makes sense. Technologists create the online trends that the mainstream adapts and adopts. Blogging counts as one of those trends, and technologists within companies often knew about blogs and began blogging long before the rest of us. Some of the employee bloggers are pseudo-celebrities, drawing an audience at conferences that seems more appropriate for Jessica Alba than an industry Steven King.

Charlene Li, a well known employee blogger for Forrester and blogging white paper author said in October 2004 that employees will blog whether you (the employer) like it or not. And more than a handful of employees do so today. The initial reaction for many companies is to control what their employees say on their personal blog, especially if that blog covers some aspects of the employees’ occupation. Individual run blogs simply don’t work that way, and the harder a company tries to control what gets said, the greater the backlash that will occur. That doesn’t mean companies should take a completely hands off approach. Instead a company should set boundaries and provide context for its employees who might currently blog or begin blogging. Companies from Yahoo to IBM have a policy regarding employee participation in public discourse, and surprising to some, the policies tend to offer a great degree of flexibility. They also tend to avoid dense legalese and choose instead to be more informal, i.e. they communicate to bloggers the way bloggers communicate with their audience.

Best practices for Employers

• Err on the side of flexibility, openness, and trust with employee – includes allowing blogging on company time and say negative things.
• Ask employees who blog about the company and industry to submit URL – help them understand that you respect their right to free speech, and that you will read employee blogs just as much to learn from them as to keep aware of the company brand. If you have incented employees properly, they will want to contribute and have no reason to hide.
• Censure first then fire: getting rid of someone is likely to draw more interest to their cause – the rules of blogging are still being written, and often employees will make unintentional mistakes, ones such as my situation that led to potential client not closing to others that could initially seem like the person has shared too much.

Companies should know that blogging, regardless of who does it, is a form of personal expression and personal branding. Some employees will promote the company more than others, and that is fine. There is no way to right or wrong amount. Additionally, much as the blogosphere is a highly democratic medium, e.g. last week we discussed how company blogs often link to their competitors’, when setting policy for employees, companies should keep an open mind, focusing on fairness, and keeping the nature of blogging in mind. A good example and something allowed by Yahoo and Sun is that employees should have the ability to say negative things. They will not necessarily agree with everything the company does, and it’s ok if their blogs reflect this. Here is a quote from one of Yahoo’s well-known and highly respected employee bloggers, Jeremy Zawodny on why Google Finance “made him sad.”

“I’m not gonna name names (virtually none of them are around anymore anyway), but there was a real lack of leadership in Finance for long time and it really sucked the life out of the group. Users noticed. Finance employees noticed. Other Yahoos noticed. We all knew it. And, frankly, I was glad to be out when I moved on.”

You wouldn’t want to put that quote on a press release. Such a comment flies in the face of conventional corporate wisdom, yet it is that frankness that earns Jeremy and Yahoo increased credibility and respect for allowing it. It’s worth noting, though, that the average employee should not attempt such frankness. Just as the blogosphere is, to a degree, built on reputation, the same holds true for an employee. Jeremy’s tenure and value to Yahoo are what enable him to speak so candidly. He has proven himself as an employee, and built up the reputation internally.

I don’t like blogging negatively. The risks outweigh the positives. One might be allowed, but it could easily add undue stress internally. Nonetheless, some will feel compelled to criticize publicly. If you must, I recommend looking at ones tenure in the company and in the blogosphere, then speak to the lower of the two. So, if you are a new employee but experienced blogger or an established employee but novice blogger, keep quiet in both, i.e. state your feelings more mutedly than you might if just complaining to a good friend or loved one. It’s the public nature of blogs that makes them so dangerous from a job security standpoint. We cover this more in Part 2, located here.