I got a rude comment on my blog today. When I looked at the IP address of the commenter, I was surprised to see that the rude comment in question came from within the walls of a major company.
And not only is this a major company, it’s a company whose work exists at the intersection of public relations and emerging technologies. The people who work there really ought to know better.
For those of you who are lost, here’s a primer:
- When you post a comment on a blog, the blogging software logs the point at which you accessed the Web. This is called your IP address. Each and every Web connection in the world has a unique one.
- If your physical location is within the four walls of a place of business, chances are that your current IP address is associated with the company’s servers.
- Bloggers can easily look up the IP address and find out that the comment in question came from within the company.
You can see how this would be bad for a company. If an employee decides to go off half-cocked in the blogosphere, this can come back to bite the company in the hindquarters rather than just making the individual employee look like a jackass.
So what can businesses do? A couple of things:
- Include a company blogging policy in the corporate handbook. — You know that contract that employees sign when they join up with your company? Make sure that they agree to adhere to the corporate blogging policy.
- Make sure your blogging policy includes a section on using company time to interact with the blogosphere. — These kinds of policies can range from restricting any and all blogosphere interaction during the workday to allowing employees to pursue professional interests in a mature, responsible way during portions of the business day.
- Periodically reinforce the corporate blogging policy with updates and reminders. Explain the reasoning behind each of the steps to your employees. It’s more likely that they’ll adhere to your guidelines if they understand why you’ve implemented them.
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