Establishing Corporate Standards and Policies

Nicki Dugan (Yahoo, manages corporate blog)
Ben Edwards (IBM new media)
Betsy Aoki (Microsoft)
Steve Broback (Blog Business Summit, moderator)


Nicki

Employees blogging at Yahoo for a really long time.
Jeremy Zawodny mmost prominent blogger. "Yahoo Mail" post got a lot of attention. Google's head PR guy's Yahoo mail was deleted because he hadn't logged in for a while. Jeremy agreed on his blog that this does royally suck. AIYEE! How can we stop this?

Lawyers sat down and said there's nothing beyond the employee contract - nothing to prevent employees from criticizing the company in blogs.

Their attempt to meet this challenge tturned from a document designed to discourage employees from blogging altogether into one that embraces and empowers employee blogging.

Guidelines: Peronal blog guidelines are in our handout.

First part = legal ramifications. If someone sues you for defamation or libel, you're on your own.

Best Practices page is the heart of the guidelines. Respect your colleagues. Let your manager know that you're blogging.

Early drafts of the doc are funny to read - very controlling. "When you talk negatively about the company, be sure to tell people about all the positive things that we do!"

Anonymous Yahoo bloggers came out of hiding.

Relief at clarification.

If they're not being critical in ways that are sanctioned by the company, they're probably being critical in other ways.

Ben Edwards

IBMers are encouraged to blog. Get involved, understand, notice. It's in your interests and the company's interests.
It's a minority activity - not a lot of people see value in it. Some do. Communication over wide areas, connecting group activities with groups around the world. Large company. Knit together and share information. Archive information.

Intranet social bookmarking application called "Dogear".

External: we encourage you to blog, don't provide a platform though. Publishes an opt-in directory of bloggers in the company. To qualify, blogs should be relevant to the company.

We like to maintain relations with our bloggers. Chris is our blogger-in-chief, has a lot of respect among IBM bloggers. Will give them a heads up, maybe they want to write about this, here's the company's official position on it. Arms-length relationship.

Betsy Aoki

A big conference was coming up, and a lot of people wanted blogs for that conference. So Microsoft blogging - originally on BlogX platform, then .Text - expanded hugely.

Struggled with the notion of what the corporate stance is around blogging. I was there at the blogger luncheon where Scoble got up and explained blogging.

The phrase "blog smart" emerged. There's still no official policy. The employee handbook guidelines cover blogging behavior - don't be rude to customers, etc. But "blog smart" is the guiding idea.


Discussion:

Steve:
Is a blog like an e-mail to the world? Do e-mail guidelines cover that?

Nicki:
Well, the reply isn't just to you, it's to everybody.

Nicki:
Learning: don't try to exert control. Yahoo corp comm team went out intending to bust asses. Pendulum swung in the other direction - how do we keep our blogging employees from delving into areas that will hurt them and their careers?

Steve recalls Jason's comment during his keynote: "I'm working for them."

Ed:
It's cultural, reflecting the corporation's attitudes toward its employees.

IBM "jams" are massive online events. IBM-only, but opening up to the public. Older jams unleashes all sorts of pent-up frustration. We saw that this was healthy to let employees get this out and express themselves.

Betsy:
It evolved organically. People had done the pre-work, blogging, talking about blogging, before anyone thought about formalizing it.

It depends on who you're employing. Small businesses have different needs from large businesses, maybe you employ an 18-year-old who you don't necessariily want blogging about what he did today.

Steve:
Apple. Corporate culture from the top down is secretive. What would you say to Steve Jobs?

Ed:
My job is to further the business interest of IBM. I deploy social media so we can accomplish certain goals. Steve Jobs is doing good things with Apple. He manages the Apple brand very carefully, but it's a very strong brand. I wouldn't dare to lecture Steve Jobs on how he manages the brand.

Nicki:
Yahoo corp comm nervous about comments coming in. It's not a blog if there aren't a lot of comments! Re: Apple, if it ain't broke...

Betsy:
The main reason you should be blogging is for your customers. Do Apple customers want Apple to blog?