IBM's Corporate Blogging Guidelines

We attended the Society for New Communications Research's first Research Symposium in Boston this week.  This is an impressive organization attracting some real innovative thinkers. One of the discussions from the event that I felt that this audience would find valuable was from IBM’s "chief blogger", Christopher Barger. He spoke on a corporate blogging best practices panel where he provided some colorful insights into IBM’s approach to the blogosphere.

IBM sees the critical importance of blogs and the tremendous opportunity it is for their business.  Employees all across the company are encouraged to participate on their blog and communicate directly to the public. Chris said that in the past communicating to the public was a fire-able offense for people outside the communications department.  He admitted that changing this mindset was a groundbreaking effort requiring a major cultural shift for IBM.

To help ease IBM’s management into the blogosphere, corporate blogging guidelines were needed. Chris talked candidly about these guidelines and pointed to the IBM site where these were posted last year for all to see.

While you may not work for a company as big (or as blue) as IBM, there are a lot of ideas here you can use to develop your own corporate blogging guidelines.

Here are a couple interesting points from Chris presentation: 

• He made it clear that these guidelines were meant to be just that. They are not meant to micromanage people.  Basic parameters prohibiting posts on politics, religion, and taking personal shots at people are in place to keep people focused on the standard they want to achieve.
• It is OK for employees to disagree with IBM on the blog. This is important for building the credibility and trust of the blog.  This proves that the blog is authentic and not just some corporate spin.
• If the company cracked down on a blogger making critical comments about IBM, they know they’ll run into more problems than they had before. (He referenced Google’s firing of Mark Jen last year)
• It is OK to moderate comments. Let people viewing the blog know the standard you are looking to achieve, comments must be constructive.
• Chris said that clients expect companies like IBM to have a corporate blog and not having one is akin to not having a website in 1998.

 If a lack of control over the blogging activities of your employees is stopping you from embracing a corporate blog. Take a look and learn from what IBM is doing.