Corporate Blogging Rules

My company, Thomas Nelson Publishers, is about to launch a corporate blog aggregator site. Internally, we have tried to encourage a small band of employees to begin blogging.  The aggregator site will simply link to the individual sites. It will be similar to OfficeZealot.com, but it will be accessible through our main corporate Web site.

This program  has three primary objectives:

1. To raise the visibility of our company and our products.
2. To make a contribution to the publishing community.
3. To give people a look at what goes on inside a real publishing company.

Like many companies, we have struggled with what guidance to give to our bloggers. I personally checked with several companies. None had formalized a set of blogging rules or written guidance. One Microsoft blogger told me that the only rule his company provided was, “Be smart.” I thought we probably needed a little more guidance than that, so several of us cooked up a list of “Blogging Terms and Conditions.” Our corporate counsel has also had a crack at it.

I am posting this draft publicly so that you can comment on it. If we have missed anything, I would like to know. Also, I am hoping that this might be helpful to other companies who are struggling with this same issue. I know that it would have been much easier for us if we could have started with someone else’s work first.

To give you some context, our corporate logo is the house where the company was first started in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1798. Hence, the blog aggregator site is called “House Work.” In order to participate in our corporate blog aggregator site, an employee has to agree to the following terms:

Thomas Nelson Blog Terms and Conditions
“House Work” is a blog aggregator site. Its purpose is to link to external blogs written by Thomas Nelson employees who (1) write about some aspect of the company and (2) agree to abide by the rules listed below. It is not a blog site per se. Employees who wish to blog about the company must use a service such as TypePad.com, Blogger.com, or MySpaces.com.

In order to have your blog considered for inclusion in “House Work,” you must submit it to the Blog Oversight Committee (BOC) for consideration. Before doing so, you should design your blog and write at least two entries. Once you have done this, send an e-mail to Gabe Wicks with a link to your blog. The BOC will then review your site and notify you whether or not it meets the criteria.

In order to participate in this program, you must agree to the following terms and conditions:

1. You agree to write under your own name.
2. You agree to write about the company, your job, or some aspect of our business on a regular basis.
3. You agree to include the following disclaimer on your site: “The opinions expressed on this site are the opinions of the participating user. Thomas Nelson acts only as a passive conduit for the online distribution and publication of user-submitted material, content and/or links and expressly DOES NOT endorse any user-submitted material, content and/or links or assume any liability for any actions of the participating user.”
4. You agree not to attack personally fellow employees, authors, customers, vendors, or shareholders. You may disagree with the company and its officers, provided your tone is respectful and you do not resort to personal attacks.
5. You agree not to disclose any sensitive, proprietary, confidential, or financial information about the company, other than what is publicly available in our SEC filings and corporate press releases. This includes revenues, profits, forecasts, and other financial information related to specific authors, brands, products, product lines, customers, operating units, etc.
6. You may comment on the company’s competitors, but you agree to do so respectfully without ridiculing, defaming, or libeling them in any way.
7. You agree not to post any material that is obscene, defamatory, profane, libelous, threatening, harassing, abusive, hateful or embarrassing to another person or any other person or entity.
8. You agree not to post advertisements, solicitations and/or market and/or promote any business or commercial interest, chain letters or pyramid schemes.
9. You agree not to post any material that is copyrighted unless (a) you are the copyright owner, (b) have the express, written permission of the copyright owner to post the copyrighted material on your blog, or (c) are reasonably sure that the use of any copyrighted material conforms to the doctrine of “fair use.”
10. You agree not to post any material that violates the privacy or publicity rights of another.
11. You agree to conform to the rules of the Thomas Nelson Company Handbook, especially as it relates to rules regarding conduct outside of your employment and the Insider Trading Policy on file with Human Resources.
12. You agree not to post material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots or any other computer programming routines or engines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data, or information.
13. You agree not to post or conduct any activity that fails to conform with any and all applicable local, state and/or federal laws, including, without limitation, 15 U.S.C. 6501 et seq. (the “Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998”).
14. You acknowledge that any reliance on material, content and/or links posted by other parties will be at your own risk. You assume full legal responsibility and liability for all actions arising from your posts.

Notes:
The BOC administration of “House Work” does not constitute control of free speech.  You are free to post content on any site you wish; however, the company is not obligated to link to any site that BOC does not believe is in the best interest of the company.

Nelson neither represents nor guarantees the truthfulness, accuracy or reliability of any content, including links to other content, posted by you or commentors on your blog.  Nelson does not endorse any opinions expressed by or affiliated with any commentors on your blog site.

Nelson acts as a passive conduit for the online distribution and publication of user-submitted material, content and/or links and has no obligation to screen communications or information in advance. Nelson is not responsible for screening or monitoring material, content and/or links posted by readers. If Nelson, however, is notified or becomes aware of material, content and/or links on your blog site that allegedly do not conform to these terms and conditions, Nelson may investigate such allegation and endeavor to determine in good faith and in its sole discretion whether to request the removal of such content.

Nelson has no liability or responsibility for performance or nonperformance of such monitoring and/or screening activities. Nelson, however, reserves the right to stop linking to your site and take appropriate action for any violation of the terms and conditions set forth herein or any violation of any applicable local, state or federal law.

If you have any questions about the above terms and conditions, we strongly urge you to check with the BOC before making your post public. If you violate the terms and conditions, you will be notified by BOC. You will be expected to edit or change the content.

Finally, by your signature below, you agree to abide by the terms and conditions set forth in this document.

Update: I have posted a set of revised guidelines here.