The blogosphere is riddled with stories of employees who lost their jobs because of what they were posting on their personal blogs — though the actual numbers are not that high, the shocking stories were passed quickly via, what else, blog posts. In the early days of the Web, a company’s employ-ees were typically more Web-savvy than its management and felt safe in post-ing what was obviously inappropriate material about fellow employees, business plans, and even customers. The original personal focus of blogs, and the perception that they were written for family and friends, blinded some bloggers to the fact that a simple Web search could uncover what they posted. Heartache, loss of valuable employees, and lawsuits were often the result. Why does this concern you as you consider starting a business blog?
Be aware that starting a company blog will send a message to your staff that blogging is acceptable, even encouraged. This is no reason to be scared away from creating a blog. However, it does mean that you may want to consider establishing some blogging guidelines or at least letting employees know what kinds of business information need to stay in the office.
There’s another aspect to this as well: If an employee of yours starts a per-sonal blog, he will no doubt reveal aspects of his or her life that would nor-mally be invisible to you and to your customers. Consider these situations:
Do you have employees who do freelance work on the side? Would it be harmful for your company if it was known that they were freelancing for the porn industry? It may not be anyone’s business — but that doesn’t mean your company won’t be criticized if it becomes public knowledge.
Perhaps you employ people with strong political opinions. (Of course you employ people with strong political opinions!) Posted on the employee’s personal blog, those opinions are suddenly in closer proximity to your company.
Are you familiar with the saying “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”? Well, it doesn’t stay there if your employee blogs about it on his or her personal blog! Will the office gossip tomorrow be about an employee’s wild weekend?
Not every company is impacted by public opinion if its employees blog, and in fact, many companies respect employees’ right to free speech, and blog-ging isn’t an issue. But if you’re concerned, you can prevent a lot of attention simply by asking your employees to leave identifying business information off their personal blogs.
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