Marketing Technology

Two separate items appeared in my RSS newsreader this morning which seemed to share a connection.

The first, from Plaxo’s Mark Jen, in response to Fredrik’s comparison of corporate blogging policies, calls for a site that collects all the different blogging policies available on the net.

The second, part of Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz’s For Immediate Release latest podcast, contains confirmation from Adam Phillabaum that Boeing does indeed have blogging guidelines.

The connection is that Boeing’s policy is very hard to find. They – or any of their bloggers – do not appear to have published it online for others (possibly intentionally). Yet Mark’s idea would solve that and, at least from our experience, would be both a valuable resource for those creating their own guidelines and a way of encouraging companies to make their policies public.

For example, the motivation behind publishing our own policy was two-fold: firstly, for the purely selfish reason of showing leadership in our industry (which is communications, after all); but also to as a way of helping other companies struggling to develop their own. Had the likes of Groove, Microsoft, Plaxo, Sun and Thomas Nelson not already made theirs available, I very much doubt we would have be able to produce something as quickly.

But why stop at blogging policies?

How about getting companies to share all their other corporate policies? Not only would it show their commitment to complete transparency, but also serve as a great resource for smaller companies without the legal or HR expertise of the big guns. It would also give consumers an insight into the attitudes of their favourite brands towards their employees.