Four Rules of Thumb When Blogging About Work

A blog, a weblog can be anything from a personal blog about cooking, family, kids, or any other of a lot of hobbies or it can be a business blog managed by a major corporation meant as their public face to the Internet public. What I do is somewhere closer to the personal. I talk about my take on management. I blog about my personal life, and my personal take on management. My blog isn’t now, nor has it ever been an official blog about the place where I work. In fact I work very hard to not mention where I work or what line of work I’m in other than retail sales. (My first weblog was called a Journal, the word blog didn’t exist yet and was from February 1999.)

I don’t blog about work specifically for example. I’m not a representative of this job while I work. I blog about general management topics. Some of the topics about which I blog are inspired from work, but none are "ripped from the headlines" as it were from work locally. Twitter in this case is something I’m treating as a blog. It’s sort of a micro-blog, 140 character limit is certainly micro.

Four rules of thumb to follow when blogging about work:

1. Never use real names of businesses or people.
2. Never blog it close to when it happened in time.
3. Moderate ALL comments and don’t let comments through that violate rules 1 & 2.
4. Never blog from work or during work hours.

1. Never use real names of businesses or people.
When I’m telling a story about where I work now or have worked, or even when talking about another business I have dealt with I don’t give real names. When I talk about people I often refer to Mongo and Roy. Neither of those are real names of real employees. They’re nicknames of a couple guys I know who don’t mind at all that they live on in my blog as examples.

2. Never blog it close to when it happened in time.
If something at work demands a blog entry and you are dying to blog it go for it… but edit the time stamp for some time in the distant future. It’s possible your boss or employees may read your blog and will know that you’re talking about them. Let time pass, let the heat go away and revisit the post before it goes live to see if you would re-write it or tweak it. Make sure you’re still saying what you meant to say but without getting too specific.

3. Moderate ALL comments and don’t let comments through that violate rules 1 & 2.
I’ve got employees that read my blog and co-workers and my boss knows about it as well. I believe one of the owners of the company I currently work for knows it exists. I write as if they’re going to read the blog. I don’t let any of those people comment on my blog in a way that may get either of us in legal trouble or fired. It’s my blog and I feel responsible for what is said there. I’m pretty sure I’m not, but if an employee said something horrible on my blog while I wasn’t looking and their boss saw it and they lost their job I’d feel bad. I am very up front with my employees and co-workers about MY policy about work and my blog. It’s not company policy, it’s my blog’s policy, and as the blog-owner… I don’t have to ask for permission. IT’S ALL MINE! MUAHAHhahahahahahaha.

4. Never blog from work or during work hours.
This one to me is an ethical thing. If I’m being paid to work I should be working and not blogging. That being said, I’ve twittered from work and will probably do so in the future. I don’t blog during work hours though. Now, if you’re going to blog from work, maybe your job is one where you have the time and are able to. Do it smartly, edit the time stamp so it doesn’t hit while you’re at work. There’s no sense in giving your boss ammo against you for an unemployment hearing. "See, here he’s supposed to be working and he’s plainly blogging about World of Warcraft! How is that related to his job of widget cranking? Obviously he was off task and blah blah blah…"

The job market out there isn’t all that great if you’re looking so when you’re online think a little before posting. Think before twittering. Think before doing anything insane on Facebook or Myspace. Any interviewer worth their salt is going to have checked a lot of those sites for you before you walk in the door. While you don’t have to live like a saint you should certainly be aware that future employers as well as current ones are not ignorant of the Internet and there’s a great chance they’re curious about what you’re saying out there.

The Four Rules of Thumb When Blogging About Work by Rich Griffith, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.