Blogging is all about communication, and whenever people talk, there will sometimes be miscommunication. As we've seen in the past with the introduction of new technologies ranging from the printing press to telephones to television, the key is to use a medium appropriately and to set proper expectations.

Immediate communication is fantastic for sending updates on timely matters, but also lets people share ideas without thinking them through, while in the heat of emotion, or before they've had a chance to do proper research. And tools like search engines that record and index content mean that a lot of what we say through blogs can be considered permanently "on the record".

And of course, most organizations don't offer media or communications training to everyone in the company. This means that employees who want to go out and comment on public blogs or publish content on the official company blog might not have the experience or judgment to decide what's appropriate to share.

The danger isn't from blogs, it's from the fact that any of us can talk to the whole world at any time. Whether your staff is talking too loudly in the supermarket, is taking ill-considered pictures with a camera phone, or forwards an email to the New York Times, you'll need to have a smart policy that adapts to all the new risks of communicating in our culture.

The #1 rule: have a hotline

Above all else, your staff needs to feel comfortable in situations that could possibly be contentious or risky. This means that before they update a blog or submit a comment on a site, they must have a place to go to verify its appropriateness.

Here's what to do: Create a single point of contact where any question about appropriate communication can be addressed, such as a single phone number or email address. This is an important increasingly requirement regardless of whether your company uses blogs or not. Then, encourage all members of your team to err on the side of contacting the hotline whenever there are any concerns or qualms about something that's going to be posted on a blog.

Of course, you'll need to monitor those points of contact. Once you've created a blogging policy, you can coordinate between groups such as human resources and communications or marketing to decide the appropriate resources to allocate to responding to blogging questions.

Most organizations that are blogging today have found that creating such a hotline does not require an extensive investment of resources. The mere idea of having a point of contact encourages employees to be responsible with what they say, and most questions are quickly answered by reviewing the message against the terms of your company's blogging policy as well as its general human resources, trade secrets and nondisclosure policies.

Key areas of risk

If you need to identify the risk areas that will shape your blogging policy, it's easy to start with topics that are probably already part of your general guidelines about behavior and disclosure. Blog posts or comments about the personal life or traits of any individual, company financial information, legal proceedings, material statements about publicly-traded companies, trade secrets, or mentions of competitors or partners should clearly be off-limits in almost any organization. In addition, organizations with government relationships or in high-security industries will likely have a lengthy additional list of content constraints.

In most organizations, a good rule of thumb is that employees should not blog about any message that they wouldn't be comfortable having appear in a newspaper or on the evening news. Similarly, people who are publicly identifiable as company employees should often consider their statements as if they are representing their employer.

Most examples of employees who have suffered negative attention for blogging or commenting have violated company policy which would apply whether on a blog, in email, in print, when spoken, or in any other medium.

General principles

Make your policies as consistent as possible, whether regarding blogging or any other behavior that employees are likely to engage in. Understand that blogging is not fundamentally different than creating home videos and sharing them, or in writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper - common sense covers most situations.

Though blogging may be the impetus for the creation of such a policy, you can see this task as taking care of a risk that would need to be addressed regardless of your adoption of blogs.

Learn from example

Creating a blogging policy can seem complex. Fortunately, many organizations (including those with more employees and more lawyers than your company probably has) have already created some useful policies. And, in the spirit of openness and communication that defines blogging, they've generously shared their results to act as a basis for other companies that want to get started.

We've collected some of the first, best examples, to act a basis for your own research. Of course, you'll want to seek legal advice and the counsel of your own company's own leadership before deploying or approving any final policy.

IBM

IBM was one of the first large organizations to fully embrace blogging, and their commitment didn't end with use of the new medium. IBM's management enlisted the help of their employees to help define their blogging policy, and then made the final results available on the web.

See: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/dwblogcomments.jspa?blog=351&entry=81328

Yahoo

Yahoo has made available a similar set of blogging guidelines, which can also form an excellent place to start in creating your policy.

See: http://jeremy.zawodny.com/yahoo/yahoo-blog-guidelines.pdf

Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Electronic Frontiers Foundation helps protect people's rights online, and as part of their mandate, their team has created a Legal Guide for Bloggers. Many key legal issues are addressed in the broad-ranging guide.

See: http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/

Next: Tracking Blogs in your Community