Bob's Blog

I was reading through my collection of newspapers on my way back from a visit with our new client, Planning Factory at their Bermuda Operations. The great thing about our offices being on the Christina River is that we can cruise right from Bermuda directly to the rowing docks in front of the office. I understand that my dear friend Steve from Pfizer even saw our craft as we passed under I-95!

Back to my newspaper reading. The New York Daily News had an interesting article on a person who was concerned about what potential employers might see the crazy stuff said on her MySpace account along side her professional life on the web. While few of us would like our youthful indiscretions to be on display next to our professional accomplishments, Google makes no distinction. Keep that in mind as you explore MySpace and wonder what respectable job some of these people hold. I’m sure there is an attorney or two who might take the case suing a person for their own defamation of character.

Now extend this thinking to your own company communications. While your corporate web site has been scrutinized and sanitized, what other communications are attached to your company’s name? The blog craze has everyone wanting to create their own blog, including your employees. In trying to develop our own blog policy, I asked Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo for their policy. He passed along their policy, which I think is written in the plain English lawyers hate.

Again, Google makes no distinction between your polished site, and your employee’s discussion of alien invasions at work. In fact, the text rich approach of blogs makes them excellent sources of indexable content for search engines, creating a situation where your employee’s blog will rank above your company web site.

Other inadvertent connections can occur when employees use their work email address to post on message boards. Even though the posts may be personal in nature, your employee’s post on the ‘Vote for Hemp’ site has their email address, and thus your company’s web address after the ‘@’ symbol in the employee’s return email address.

What can you do? Think about your policies towards blogs and using work email addresses for personal items. Clearly communicate this with your employees. Finally, monitor (or have someone like us monitor) how your company is listed in blogs, web sites, and message boards.