Blogging and Business Reputation/Brand Name Protection

For many people who blog, the blog itself is either the creation or an extension of a personal or company brand. For most, the personal and company brand are one in the same. In a recent interview in American Way (the in-flight magazine of American Airlines), David D'Alessandro, CEO of John Hancock Financial Services asserts that with every little move, word, and action in the workplace, you are building a personal brand that needs to be nurtured, managed and protected.

When it comes to business controls and corporate governance, the same concepts extend to blogging by individuals or even the responses that people post to blogs with a very simple, but at times elusive, goal: protecting the reputation and brand of a company.

As many bloggers have seen over the past few weeks, a small misstep on a blog can produce potentially disastrous results for a company, especially if the name of a company reflects an individual. Also,it has become clearer that a corporate/company misstep that in the past that might have gone unnoticed can find life through a blog and mutate beyond the control of a company, damaging their brand and reputation.

I do not think there is a magic bullet solution to maintain effective controls over employees that blog either on company time or on their own (especially if the employee is well known enough to be tied closely to their employer).

However, as blogging remains the rage of the day and perhaps is an internet "fad" that will remain,it is a potential threat that companies need to address in terms of business controls. Issues that should be addressed include:

1. Should the company retain editorial control over the contents of a blog?
2. Does the company have adequate resources to maintain editorial control over the contents of a blog?
3. What are the acceptable topics(think acceptable use policies for e-mail as a starting point) that an employee can speak to on a blog? What will the penalties be for non-compliance? How do you balance risk vs. free speech on a personal blog?
4. Who owns the intellectual property that is published on a blog?
5. What kind of legal disclaimers should be addressed/included?
5. Is the potential risk significant enough that the benefits derived from a blog are so far outweighed that it is not even worth exploring as a tool?

What do you think? If you and your company are one in the same, what kind of risk assessment do you take in deciding how, when and what to blog?