By Karen Rynes, Director of Marketing

Last week, I talked about the reasons why a business should blog and what benefits can come from blogging.  There is another important aspect of corporate or business blogging that you should be aware of: making or receiving critical or defamatory remarks and protecting yourself from any legal liability as a result of blogging.

As I noted in my Dec. 4th post blogging is simply an ongoing conversation, which inherently makes it a "free for all."  While this is one of the most attractive things about blogging, it can also be dangerous to a business.

Last week, I came across an eye-opening & thought-provoking post on the IAOC blog by Nancy Flynn, author of the book Blog Rules: A Business Guide to Managing Policy, Public Relations and Legal Issues.

In her post, Nancy points out, "A business blog opens the organization up to potential disasters.  Risks include the loss of trade secrets, confidential information, and intellectual property; negative publicity, damaged reputations, and public embarassment; workplace lawsuits alleging copyright infringement, defamation, sexual harassment, and other claims; court sanctions, legal settlements, and regulatory fines; and lost employee productivity."

She continues by saying when implementing a blog program for your business, companies should "require employees to sign a confidentiality agreement to protect trade secrets and confidential data belonging to the organization, employees, customers, business partners, and other third parties."  This is something that I'm sure many business bloggers have not considered.

On the face of it, certainly it makes sense to want to protect your business from harm.  And it is standard operating procedure in the corporate world to require confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements, or non-compete clauses, from employees, customers and business partners.  So why not require it of employees when it pertains to company blogging, too?  It seems logical.

But...and you knew there'd be a big BUT!...here comes the hot button:  Nancy goes on to write, in addition to covering the company blog, it is also a good idea for the confidentiality agreement to cover posts and comments made on employees' personal blogs and other external blogs.

My first reaction was this is a bit too much like "Big Brother" trying to control our actions outside of work.  What about freedom of speech?  Where does the line blur between work & our personal lives?  You can see how there are strong -- and emotional -- arguments for both sides of this issue.

The purpose of my Social Media series is to educate myself and also to share information and tips I learn about blogging for business.  My intent here is not to take a stand one way or the other on this particular issue -- but to raise the question.  I believe this subject is relevant, and, despite the fact that it is a controversial topic, there is a tremendous opportunity to open up the discussion to see what you think and feel.  After all, the blogosphere is a collection of conversations -- so why not hold the conversation on this topic right here?

While the legal system has not yet caught up with many Web 2.0 and social media technologies, that doesn't mean you shouldn't bother to recognize the potential legal implications of blogging and have the foresight to implement rules and policies within your organization that will enable you to avoid a potential PR or shareholder disaster...or worse.  So, the questions are:  should there be rules and should those rules or policies extend outside of the workplace?

What do you think?  Do you agree?  Vehemently disagree?  Feel indifferent?  Does your company have a blogging policy?  We all learn from one another and I'd love to hear your comments & opinions!

You can read Nancy's entire post "Blog Rules:  12 Best Practices to Keep You in Business -- And Out of Court -- With Your Reputation Intact" here.

As always, thanks for reading my series on Social Media!  For related material, here's last week's post about why your business should blog.

Note:  I'll be out of town for the holidays, so the next series post won't appear until after the New Year, but I will check in when I can for comments, reacting, and of course, reading other blogs in between sips of egg nog!  Merry Christmas & happy holidays, everyone!