Marketing Technology

Fredrik Wackå has published a very thorough comparison of eight corporate blogging policies (our own included) over on his CorporateBloggingBlog:

“On four points, all of the eight most well-known corporate blogging policies agree — corporate bloggers are personally responsible and they should abide by existing rules, keep secrets and be nice. Those four principles are the core of today’s corporate blogging rules.”

He helpfully breaks his comparison down into three components:

1. The core rules (personal responsibility, abiding by existing rules, keeping secrets, and being nice)
2. The common rules (add value, follow the law, respect copyright, cite and link, discuss with your manager)
3. The unusual rules (corporate goal, disagree with the boss, stop if we say so, contact the PR team)

The only thing I disagree with Fredrik on is the need for a corporate goal. I agree that it is critical if the objective of the policy is to encourage “blogging for the brand”, but I don’t think it’s relevant when the policy refers to employee’s own personal weblogs, like ours was. As we develop our own business blogging community, we will be much more specific about what we are trying to achieve by doing so.

In all, I think this is an essential read for the many organisations busily creating policies (and a wake up call to those who aren’t). It certainly would have helped our own efforts to have something like this to refer to.