TechWag

Image via CrunchBaseUnfortunately, blogging can lead you to being fired. Part of this was discussed in the section “fired for blogging” and the common mistake that those who were fired for blogging was to do something against the blogging policy of the company. Even if there was no policy at the time, the reason for being fired was that the company was very aware of their brand, and believed that the blogger somehow or in some way disrupted or brought discredit to the brand in question. In one case, the company believed that there might be a security issue with a picture that was posted on line. Early on in blogging, when the technology and the phenomena was new, many companies did not have a blogging policy and did not know what to do about bloggers. The easiest route to take was to fire the employee that was blogging when the blog was discovered. Many employees also did not believe that they needed to tell their employer about their blog.

Many companies now have corporate blogging policies, and it is important that you understand the risks and rewards for following or not following the corporate blogging policy. While it is good that the employer know you are blogging, and give them the URL’s of where you write, depending on what industry you are in, blogging is either accepted or not. The idea of acceptance of the blog is important, some companies might insist that you stop blogging while you work there , and you will have to weigh that against what your blogging goals are. If you can demonstrate to your employer that you are a professional blogger, even if you do not always say things that your employer will agree with, it is important to find some middle ground so that you can continue to blog professionally. There are even ways to show that this will help raise awareness of products or of the company, in general if you are allowed to blog and mention that you work there, even if you put a disclaimer on your blog entries that your thoughts are your own.

If you work for a Cisco, a Microsoft, or a Google, then blogging about what cool things you are doing or about the products you are working on is generally accepted. You can do this on the company web sites or off depending on what you are writing about on your blog. While some bloggers like Mini-Microsoft have been able to remain anonymous, they do their blogging at great risk to their own careers. While bloggers like Robert Scoble were able to take on Microsoft directly over an issue, even he left (voluntarily) within a year of the problem.

There are some topics you simply want to stay away from if you blog. Never blog about your co-workers, never blog about confidential or proprietary company information including financials , keep your association with the company to a minimum on your blog. Never blog on company time unless the blog is company sponsored like in the case of Microsoft or Google. If you can get away with it, never mention your company on your blog without their express written permission. You should be intimately aware of what is in the company blogging policy, and if they do not have one, help them write one, or work with your managers and HR to develop a policy based on what other companies have done. Many companies post their blogging policies, and there are a few template policies that a company can use and build upon for their own purposes.

The other thing to do is consider what you have written before you hit the post button on your blog. While we have bad days, we all have people we do not enjoy in our organizations, and we all have something to say about the people we work with, the idea is to never cross those boundaries . On a number of clients, I have advised on, when a blogger is talking about the people that they work with, the damage to the team, organizational trust, and the ability of the organization to carry on the day-to-day tasks becomes very difficult. In one case of people in the company blogging about other people in the company, the unit was so badly damaged in terms of trust that very little was able to be accomplished until the team turned over. The good part of all this was that the team turned over completely within a year of the event. This cost the company though some of their best employees who had deep corporate knowledge of systems that would have been difficult if not impossible to replace.

What is particularly distressing to co-workers when you blog about them is the “water cooler effect .” While rumors are always found in a company, and office gossip is always discussed, when it is taken outside of the company and put on a blog, people believe that their reputations before the whole world have been tarnished. The blog, much like a book, takes the gossip to a completely new level of invasiveness . Understanding the concepts of “in the public interest” and the difference between a private person and a public person will help you understand many of the liabilities you have when you blog about your co-workers. In many cases it might not just be your job that you lose, but also a case of slander or reputational damage if you cannot prove that what you were discussing was worthy of being in the public interest . As a publisher, you can be held responsible for the comments and entries that you post on your blog, or on other blogs if you can be identified.

The content of your blog carries a certain weight, and the more popular you are within the blogosphere with your blog, the harder it is to erase any bad behavior on the writer’s part. Employers might use what you write about to see if you really are ready to work for the company . The other issue about being open with your blog is not that you will be fired, but that if you write about your co-workers, personal problems, and other issues that might be best left in private, you might not get the job you are looking for . When we bring our personal lives into the interview by not having a professional blog, and using the blog to discuss the intimate details of our lives, this can compromise the ability for you to be employed. Not just from the viewpoint of what you have written, but by the general pattern of behavior that your blog shows towards others . If you have a snarky blog and want to work for a button down company, the styles will clash, and you might not be hired because of what you write and how you write. If you have talked about your co-workers, your employers, your bosses, you can guarantee unemployment for a very long time.

Employers increasingly use your e-mail address to find you on the internet to see what other people say about you. This includes your MySpace pages , blogs, Facebook, linked in, and the many other social things that we participate in online. The idea of privacy, or blogging anonymously can be compromised by how you associate yourself to the things you do. This is also a very fine line that you have to walk. In some cases, your blog might help you get the job, in other cases, and this is dependent upon the company, your blog might keep you from being hired. Even if you take down the blog and erase its contents, the blog will always live on in systems like Archive.org, Google, MSN Cache systems, or other systems including links to your blog.

One other aspect of blogging is that at times, people who read your blog might try to contact your employer over something you wrote. This is a unique aspect of blogging where people believe that in order to keep your job you will remove something from your blog, or otherwise change what you wrote about a product or a company . This happens at all levels of blogging, from the famous to the not so famous. When someone contacts your employer about your blog or something you wrote about on your blog, then things can get interesting. Your employer suddenly is involved in your personal life, and that can cause many problems for a blogger who still wants to or needs to keep their day job. Not everyone wants to be always accountable to their employer for the things they do outside of work , but when you blog, things can get very difficult very fast. One way around this is the disclaimer that your blog is your thoughts only, and does not reflect the opinion of your employer. While this is not always failsafe , it might be a good thing to have on your blog if you are worried about it, or your employer asks you to use such a disclaimer.