This is part 4 of a new series on how to start a business blog, and is aimed at businesses of all sizes. In these articles, I’m going to address business-specific concerns and requirements for business blogging. Previously: How to Start a Business Blog, Part 3
Step 5: Determine the Business Blog’s Policies
For a business of any size with a blog or multiple blogs, having clear blogging policies and procedures is essential. And when I say “clear,” I mean: plain English that anyone can understand, not “clearly this was written by lawyers and you have no hope of understanding it.” If you’re going to join the blogosphere, don’t go writing something that sounds like a contract from the 1700s.
Business Blog Policies should:
- Clearly state what the blog topics are to be.
- Clearly state what is unacceptable or out-of-bounds.
- Clearly state what should be done if there is any doubt whether or not a topic is acceptable (most of you might take that to automatically mean don’t publish it, but that may not be the best thing to do–risk does have its rewards, after all).
- Provide a mechanism for review and approval of gray area topics.
- State expectations for posting frequency and length.
- Explain the business blog’s commenting or no-commenting policy (this is the subject for a future post in this series).
- Clearly outline the bloggers’ authority, capacity, and procedures for customer service issues that may arise through the blog if the blog allows comments.
- List what company resources the blogger has at her disposal (information, images, printers, computer, and audio/video equipment, etc.) and what, if anything, can be expensed.
- Outline what should happen if bloggers temporarily cannot fulfill their obligations: who they should contact and what will be done (skip posts or employ a guest blogger, etc.).
- For ghostwriters or professional company bloggers, explain the pay package and payment schedule.
As you can see, there is more to this than you might first think. Many business decision-makers understand the power and benefits of blogging, but are afraid of the risks. I think the benefits far outweigh the risks. Use the framework above to draft some common-sense business blog policies.
The above are policy points for company blogs–not for employees’ personal blogs (that’s also a topic for another day).
In How to Start a Business Blog, Part 5, I’ll discuss business blog platform issues. Subscribe to my RSS feed so you don?t miss it!
I think this is the area that company and corporate find most challenging, policy. You got to trust your employee when you allow them to blog, and this is not easy. And corporate spy are out there too.
Whether to outsource to professional blogger or let your CEO/High Level Manager to do the blogging also in heated debate. To hire professional blogger will be like hire a PR team, and that’s is sometime missing whole point since blogging is not or shouldn’t be your press release.
@Hoobin,
Yes it’s very challenging. For a company to have a blog requires a different kind of thinking than the old days. But even the biggest old stalwarts can embrace it successfully, such as GM and Microsoft.
One key to success in this is to have a solid policy as I’ve outlined here. There is a certain amount of risk to shoulder when a company starts a blog, but the risk of not blogging–of not engaging the public in a way it will soon come to expect–is to risk irrelevance and worse.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments!
True, not engaging openly is a bigger risk now for corporate.
Open innovation has start gaining momentum, blogging, wiki, open source are the foundation for open innovation strategy.
@Hoobin,
You have it exactly right. Seth Godin has said that (and I’m totally paraphrasing here) the new dangerous behavior is to try and play it safe, to not take risks. Risk is the new normal.
In a world where most things are fast becoming commodities, differentiation becomes increasingly important. Risk is the new normal and the old normal is just plain boring. Not engaging openly is a risk but is this acknowledged by the higher management? I read one high level executive said openness is such a big word that can be misunderstood” and I have penned my views on that. Check out and let me know if you agree over my blog.