Blog Rules: A Business Guide to Managing Policy, Public Relations, And Legal Issues

by Nancy Flynn

According to Fortune magazine, online journals known as blogs--short for web logs--are "a force business can't afford to ignore." With 9 million U.S. bloggers currently operating, and an astonishing 80,000 new blogs appearing daily, companies must quickly devise ways to take advantage of this new tool while protecting themselves from legal liabilities as well as critical or defamatory remarks. To complicate matters, the threats aren't all external. Consider the employee who reveals confidential company information on his personal blog. Or even the official corporate blog that misrepresents the company's finances. Blog Rules is a best-practices guide to establishing the blog-related policies and procedures businesses need. Readers will learn how * legally and ethically regulate employees' personal blogs that mention the company * protect trade secrets and other proprietary information * manage the legal and business exposure associated with corporate blogs * respond swiftly and effectively to blog assaults against the company--and much more.

Genres: Technology

226 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2006

About the author

Nancy Flynn is an editor and former columnist at getcrafty.com. She also designs her own line of handbags. She lives in San Francisco, California, with her husband and two daughters.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

God this book was annoying!

Its like Flynn really thinks you should not, under any circumstances, blog. She continuously, and only, points out the risks of blogging, and very briefly mentions the opportunities that blogging presents. If you aren't concentrating you will completely miss any of the opportunities mentioned for blogging. In fact, in the interviews while the people she interviews talk strongly about the benefits of blogging Flynn just goes back to questioning to try get them to say how risky it is.

I would question how valid a lot of the information in this book is because not only was this written in blogging's infancy, when people were still working out how blogging would actually work, and also because clearly Flynn comes to this argument strongly biased from the blogging is negative side of the fence. Never a good place to be when writing a book that is trying to discuss a very important, and yes, potentially risky business tool. The writer MUST be impartial so that the best information is presented for businesses. I would suggest this is not the best information, but just some information.

Also frustrating is how often Flynn says "termination of employment". Jesus! Get over it! Realistically if someone blogs something you don't think meets company policy there are better ways to meet this rather than "FIRE 'EM"!!! Obviously (as pointed out in both interviews and sone of the examples of companies suing individuals) these extreme behaviours of response can only act to ruin company reputation more, as individual bloggers recognise the power of blogging and the fact that due to previous bad behaviour they have already lost pretty much everything, so they turn once more to the blog to get their (clearly) loyal following to think even worse of the company. So if you bring to their attention the error of their ways and allow them the opportunity to right this, or work with them maturely to solve the issues then suddenly you have a blogger in a strong public position (because good bloggers do have a certain power in society as opinion leaders) who will vouch for you and give you free good PR.

I just don't understand the need to repeat things especially right after the thing was said already. So her "tips" are written through the text. Then she has speech bubbles throughout which say EXACTLY the same thing, then she has "rules" which are just that exact same comment stated again, then she has a whole chapter dedicated to a list of all the "rules", and then each chapter reiterates the same idea and in sone case is copied and pasted particular paragraphs straight across to a new chapter. I just think she doesn't have much to say, only has one idea, and has a page count she is trying to reach in any way she can.

Such a dud of a book not worth the time or effort.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a quick, easy-to-skim overview of the legal and public relations issues surrounding blogs. It mostly covers external blogs, but there are some discussions about internal blogging as well, and many of the points made are applicable to both.

I agreed with most of what the author has to say, particularly about the importance of written policies. I was a little irked by the exceptionally intrusive stance taken towards employees' non-business personal blogs (maybe it's legal to dictate what non-business-related information employees can blog about, or to forbid them from having an anonymous blog, I don't know, but it SHOULDN'T be), as well as the oversimplification of the first amendment ("Free speech rights don't extend to bloggers").

I am also not entirely sure the author understands what a permalink is, or perhaps she thinks her readers are too stupid to understand it properly. (She states ad nauseum that permalinks make a blog post last forever. Um, not quite. You can delete them. Once permalinked, they may be cached or archived by search engines, though -- that's the real problem.)

[theresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Skimmer. I am not sure what I expected. While not an expert on blogs this felt like a lot of obvious information.

[Cassie]

Really good resource for large corporations...not so useful for small companies.