It is well known that blogging is one way to easily add new content to a website, and a number of corporates are embracing the idea with gusto. Not only are there companies that do corporate blogging, but in lots of cases it is not just the CEO or the marketing manager who blogs, but the actual employees of the company itself. Google and Microsoft are just two companies that allow and/or encourage their employees to blog. But the whole concept is fraught with pitfalls. The problem is the conflict between confidentiality and openness and quite a number of blogging employees have been fired recently for inappropriate blogging behavior.
Questions that are raised and that contribute to the problems around corporate blogging are some of the following:
How much should employees be allowed to say about the internal workings of the company? Certainly, Coke-Cola will not be impressed if an employee blurts out the formula for Coke on the company blog for the whole world to see.
Likewise, should employees be allowed to criticize the company or their direct management? Some companies allow this, some do not. Another question that must be asked is how much time employees should be allowed to spend on blogging. Is this seen as part of their job descriptions, should it form part of their formal job output models?
It is clear that companies that venture into the corporate blogging arena would be wise to follow some other large corporate's examples and draw up blogging guidelines. These blogging guidelines should state clearly the boundaries within which the employee should operate, but it should not be so strict as to stifle any creativity or place a complete ban on the activity, nor make it so cumbersome to get permission to say something that it becomes virtually impossible to keep a personal feel to the blog and it merely becomes another official corporate mouthpiece.
Corporate blogging is a great way to add content to a corporate website, to attract new customers, to publish more content regarding company products, services and events and in general to add a more human feel to a company website – but some guidelines are necessary to defend both the company and the employee respectively from blogging themselves into bankruptcy or unemployment!
The following guidelines have been taken from various corporate blogging rules that are published - they might be a good starting point for any company thinking of allowing its employees to blog:
- Do not criticize other products or competitors.
- Make it clear that you are stating your own opinion, and not necessarily that of the company.
- If in doubt, discuss it with a colleague or your manager
- Do not blab company secrets (e.g. secret processes or formulas, or things such as potential mergers, takeovers, or anything that can be seen as confidential information)
- Do not blatantly use the blog as a platform for overtly selling the company products. The blog is not the right place for that. Be informative and authentic.
- Do not cite customers or partners without their approval
- And quite important – do not venture personal opinions on politics, race or religious issues – respect your reader.
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Is it ethical to follow people on TWITTER that don't want to be followed?
By: SimonStudio | 01-05-2008
Last night I left three of my AVATARS in loop. I lost around 85 followers.I shouldn't of let my cat try to talk me into bed. he kept on begging. I didn't realize the feed would haywire. My aliases on TWITTER are listed on my website. I'm keeping it transparent so it doesn't bite me in the ass. Eventually I assume most of you will unfollow n block me... but by that point I will have perfected the craft of puppet accounts! puppet accounts can be fed N2 a root account, where I can follow all fools that thought they could block me. there is NO blocking! the final account will take the RSS feed of multiple accounts and run it N2 one account. you will not realize the new account is me. twitter is about information, not privacy. this should scare off all the Betty eMOMs into a panopticon surveillance phobia. I realize that heirarchy is part of life's function, but as a thinking person I have to make sure my reputation has thorns. it is less important to me if you follow me or not. what is important is I can follow enemies. this is all about following people that block me. that is it. I don't care if they pay attention or not. I'm not the "BUGBLATTER BEAST" if you don't follow me, I'm still dangerous to values that have not been tried. I know u can't defeat logic. I don't know anyone here enough to know if they r enemies yet, what I do know is most people unfollow n "block" because of nothing. It could be tyranny, but I didn't create TWITTER, and if you don't like it... YOU CAN'T BLOCK me. those r my thorns. u can UNFOLLOW with the button, but if u anger me I will enter ur community n convince ur friends that ur wrong. no more BLOCKING. interesting feeds r created by those whose opinions r not popular. they block when questioned. I want in. I want 2 learn n dialogue. I know I don't have 2 like or agree 2 benefit. I love reading Nietzsche n Machiavelli. I assume they would block. my cycle last night was not intentional. I already realized it was theoretically possible. I was trying to filter it out. the idea is to cycle and control multiple avatars from a central one. not create a loop. if I can accomplish this then I can speak to those that block me. speak to the dead so to speak. theoretically I can make god speak. end result was creating a loop.Is it ethical to follow people on TWITTER that don't want to be followed?
Best FREE Blog Site? (Blogger vs. Wordpress?)
By: kamikazekitty007 | 28-12-2007
Can anyone tell me the best free blogging site out there? I'm stuck between Blogger and Wordpress. Can anyone list the pros and cons of each service for me? I want to move my blog from MySpace to a better system. Would one of these be a good choice? If so, which would you choose and WHY?
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By: farrukh.blogger | 05-12-2007
How often and blogger should post on his blog??? Any one one can give Number of posts that can be taken as minimum per week/month. ? While answering this question, please include the examples if possible since it will help me to decide to what should be the number of post per week!
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How to blog?
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What are the pros and cons of getting a personal domain name? And how exactly does it work?
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What are the top 10 free high quality blogs hosted at another url? I'd like to create 10 blogs, but I want to be sure the home page of the site hosting my blog is of high quality.
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