Several people have asked me recently if I have an example of a corporate blogging policy. I’ve been pointing them to Robert Scoble’s 20-point policy posted on his blog, Scobleizer. Scoble is a Microsoft technical evangelist for the .NET platform… and one of an estimated 800 Microsoft employees who blog. Here’s a nice-looking PDF version of Scoble’s Corporate Weblog Policy, packaged up by Seth Godin’s clever ChangeThis site. A few of Scoble’s 20 points…
#3 Use a human voice.
#5 Have a thick skin.
#8: If you screw up, acknowledge it. Fast. (As an example, I recently made a factual error about the CAN-Spam Act in an article I wrote about email marketing. I should have known better and felt a bit foolish. But I noted the error immediately.)
#13: If your life is in turmoil and/or you’re unhappy, don’t write. (Again, excellent advice for a business blog. Remember, you are creating a public Web page each time you add a new entry. You are NOT writing a private journal, even though you might employ that kind of voice in your writing style.)