So here is an interesting paper presented by a company called Proofpoint that has done a study on organizations concern (justified) on the lack of control over employee blogs.
Although this study really focuses on outbound email some highlights are specifically relevant to business blogs:
More than 1 in 5 US companies surveyed (21.4%) investigated the exposure of confidential, sensitive or private information via a blog or message board posting. Nearly 1 in 5 (19.2%) US companies surveyed have disciplined an employee for violating blog or message board policies in the past 12 months. 9.1% reported terminating an employee for such a violation.
12.4% of US publicly-traded companies surveyed investigated the exposure of material fi nancial
information (such as unannounced quarterly results) via a blog or message board posting in the
past 12 months.
Blogs and message boards are also considered a signifi cant source of risk. 43.2% of compa-
nies surveyed expressed a high degree of concern about blog and message board postings
(43.7% for the largest companies surveyed).
The problem as I see it is twofold:
Most companies don’t give their employees the opportunity to blog within the Corporate environment. The reality in the world today is that many people are in fact passionate about where they work and what they do. This is a good thing!
But if these people don’t have a sanctioned outlet, then they naturally turn to one of the readily available blogging tools and express themselves on their own.
Without making this toooo commercial…..the answer is to incorporate an easy to use software system of corporate blogging that enables any one who wants to bog that outlet.
The second part of the problem is that the corporation needs a way to develop a workflow around this employee generated content. Look for systems that require approvals before any blog post goes live.
Given the right system of blogging control and compliance (along with Comment Control) having employees is a godsend. The more blogging an organization can solicit from their employees the better for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and exposing a more ‘human’ side of their organization.
