How to Start a Business Blog, Part 4: Business Blog Policies

This is part 4 of a new series on how to start a business blog, and is aimed at businesses of all sizes. In these articles, I’m going to address business-specific concerns and requirements for business blogging. Previously: How to Start a Business Blog, Part 3

Step 5: Determine the Business Blog’s Policies

For a business of any size with a blog or multiple blogs, having clear blogging policies and procedures is essential. And when I say “clear,” I mean: plain English that anyone can understand, not “clearly this was written by lawyers and you have no hope of understanding it.” If you’re going to join the blogosphere, don’t go writing something that sounds like a contract from the 1700s.
Business Blog Policies should:
• Clearly state what the blog topics are to be.
• Clearly state what is unacceptable or out-of-bounds.
• Clearly state what should be done if there is any doubt whether or not a topic is acceptable (most of you might take that to automatically mean don’t publish it, but that may not be the best thing to do–risk does have its rewards, after all).
• Provide a mechanism for review and approval of gray area topics.
• State expectations for posting frequency and length.
• Explain the business blog’s commenting or no-commenting policy (this is the subject for a future post in this series).
• Clearly outline the bloggers’ authority, capacity, and procedures for customer service issues that may arise through the blog if the blog allows comments.
• List what company resources the blogger has at her disposal (information, images, printers, computer, and audio/video equipment, etc.) and what, if anything, can be expensed.
• Outline what should happen if bloggers temporarily cannot fulfill their obligations: who they should contact and what will be done (skip posts or employ a guest blogger, etc.).
• For ghostwriters or professional company bloggers, explain the pay package and payment schedule.
As you can see, there is more to this than you might first think. Many business decision-makers understand the power and benefits of blogging, but are afraid of the risks. I think the benefits far outweigh the risks. Use the framework above to draft some common-sense business blog policies.
The above are policy points for company blogs–not for employees’ personal blogs (that’s also a topic for another day).