Blogging is a powerful communication channel that is used by small and large businesses and can be part of your social media marketing strategy. In larger organizations, blogging can pose a serious threat to business information without any internal policies and guidelines. It is vital to have a blogging policy in place that makes your employees aware of all the things that can and cannot be discussed on their private blogs and on the company blog.
If you don’t have a blogging policy in place for your business, your employees can cross the line even if they don’t have those intentions. Subjects that they should not discuss usually includes confidential and proprietary information.
What can you include in your blogging policy?
- Every employee should take responsibility for what they post.
- Always follow the company rules and policies.
- Keep confidential company information a secret.
- Use respect, restraint and etiquette.
- Show respect to the company’s clients, employees and vendors.
- With blogging you must always be accurate, add value, and write about what you know.
- Follow related laws to blogging (copywrite, etc).
Blogging policy examples that you can use
Boundaries: Place boundaries on what can be discussed on your blog and employees private blogs. A good example is not allowing blog posts that deals with legal, political and financial matters.
Company secrets: Never disclose company secrets. When your employees write blog posts, they should use their common sense on what to blog about. Your employees are responsible for protecting your company’s confidential and proprietary information.
Disclaimers: Have a disclaimer that states that the opinions and views of your employees on your blog is not necessarily the views of your company. This accounts for employees personal blogs as well.
Approval topics: Any blog topics not related to the company should not be posted without prior approval.
Blogging is an excellent digital marketing strategy and can have huge potential to drive targeted traffic to your website and at the same time build credibility for your business. Make sure you have a blogging policy to help protect your business.
