Blog Rules: A Business Guide to Managing Policy, Public Relations, and Legal Issues [Paperback]

Nancy Flynn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 31, 2006

"From the millions of people with a conviction or cause they're eager to share with like-minded readers, to the thousands of corporations looking for a more effective and reliable way to build trust-based relationships with their customers, it's no wonder that an astonishing 80,000 new web logs -- -- or "blogs" -- are appearing daily. Unfortunately, this includes employees who might reveal confidential company information, and even official corporate blogs that could potentially misrepresent company finances. Everyone, it seems, is blogging, and any organization that fails to take advantage of this exciting new platform, while also protecting itself from legal liabilities as well as critical or defamatory remarks, is sure to suffer the consequences. Blog Rules is a best-practices guide to establishing the blog-related policies and procedures your business needs. You'll learn how to: * Legally and ethically regulate employees' personal blogs that mention the company * Protect trade secrets and other proprietary information * Manage the legal and business exposure associated with corporate blogs * Respond swiftly and effectively to blog assaults against the company -- and much more. The book helps you control your message and your brand, showing you how to train and familiarize your people with the rules you've established, and how to protect your reputation from both internal and external sources. Featuring secrets, strategies, and success stories from real-life companies, including IBM and Stonyfield Farms, Blog Rules is the one guide you need to ensure that your organization is helped and not hindered by this revolutionary tool."

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Businesses can't afford to ignore this latest publishing phenomenon. Yet, as Flynn points out in Blog Rule 4, "It's the casual, conversational, anything-goes nature of the blog that makes it both so appealing to blog writers and readers--and so potentially dangerous to business." In neatly ordered chapters, with plenty of recaps and action plans (perfect for busy businesspeople to skim), Flynn helps readers decide first of all if blogging can benefit their business and, if so, how to do it in a way that's safe for business. Although her suggestions--creating a blog management team, writing blog rules, and training relentlessly--will undoubtedly minimize businesses' exposure to information leaks and litigation, they also run the risk of quashing the spontaneity essential to blogs' success. Such a balancing act is probably inevitable, although businesses that weigh the risks too long risk getting left behind. Includes Q&As, sample blog policies, and plenty of best practices. Bloggers will squawk, but suits will study. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"Praise for Nancy Flynn’s Previous Books

E-Mail Rules

""A handy e-risk management tool for companies...Good advice abounds for executives, managers, and line employees... Recommended for all business collections. ""

-- Library Journal

The E-Policy Handbook

""This new book on the risk management of electronic communications is what every business book should be: easy to understand, full of practical tips, and provocative... You might not find a more useful business book this year, or next, than this one. ""

-- Training

""...an eye-opening book.""

-- BookPage

""If your company has an online presence -- even one employee online -- then buy this book...This nice, concise book explains the ins-and-outs of making your workforce Net savvy.""

-- The Toronto Star"

“If blogging is something your company is considering, this book should be studied carefully long before the first word is posted.”

-Security Management

“This book is a must-read for any manager of blogs who wants an overview of important policy and legal issues.”

-Choice

“Since the rules about online relationships and blogs can be hazy, Nancy Flynn has written an essential guide….In a world where technology outpaces us all, this very tactile book will come in handy.”

-Niche Magazine

"... an essential guide….In a world where technology outpaces us all, this very tactile book will come in handy.”

-Niche Magazine

"... the one guide readers need to help ensure that their organizations are helped and not hindered by this revolutionary tool.”

-Business Times

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 17 and up
  
• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: AMACOM (July 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814473555
• ISBN-13: 978-0814473559
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,400,861 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is the one book about blogging you need now!, August 14, 2006

By 

Daniel B. Beaulieu "Business book man" (Maine) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blog Rules: A Business Guide to Managing Policy, Public Relations, and Legal Issues (Paperback)

If you or your company is not blogging yet... you will be very soon. There are currently over 9 million bloggers in the U.S. It takes about twenty minutes to set up your first blog in fact it is so easy and quick that about 80,000 a day are doing it.
There is no doubt that if the internet has changed doing business as we know it then blogging has changed marketing as we know. And not just a little bit, but to an extent that we are just starting to figure out.
Blogging is the most democratic of what the internet has to offer. With the right blog a person can become world famous literally over night. Suddenly authors who could not get their works published use blogs to create a following of readers large enough to get the attention of publishers who sign them to book contracts. There is the case of the young unknown New York City woman who decided to work her way through Julia Child's cookbook one recipe at a time and then create a blog about it. That young lady is now world famous with an instant bestseller to launch her writing career..
Businesses are using blogs to get closer to their customers. Their employees are using blogs to complain about those businesses. Blogs are being used to influence politics both local and especially national.
But now this virtual free for all is over, rules and regulations have come into the picture as the law has come to this "last frontier" of commerce. And with the arrival of the rules comes this down to earth easy to read" rule book" by Nancy Flynn, written in a wonderful easy to read and appreciate prose this book takes all bloggers veterans and novices alike through the peaks and valleys of blogging.
From the firsts section where Ms. Flynn describes the importance of blogging and its impact on the global marketplace to tips on how to make your blog successful, to most importantly her section on how to keep your company out of court, this book proves invaluable.
Here are some examples of the more pertinent advise you'll get from this book:
* Blog etiquette: What you can and cannot say on your blog.
* Employee bloggers beware. If you are an employee and you knock your company you can and will be found out and in the best case you will only be fired, worst case sued.
* Don't allow IT to dictate your business blog program. (personally I say don't let your IT people anywhere near your blog, or your web site for that matter. Just let them help built it, connect it and keep it running other than that do not listen to a single thing they have to say about marketing and customers. They don't have a clue they are IT people for heaven's sake!)
* The casual conversational tone of a blog is what makes it particularly dangerous. You can be sued for libel for what you say on a blog as much as you can be for printing it in a newspaper.
I have to admit that I am hooked on the whole blogging thing and that's why this book appeals to me. In the past couple of months I have purchased a whole shelf of books on the subject and Blog Rules is without question the most valuable book on the subject of blogs. If I had bought this one first, I could have saved a bunch of money and skipped buying the others.
This is the book that answers all the questions. This is without a doubt the "everything you ever wanted to know about blogs but were afraid to ask" book on the subject.
As I stated earlier, if blogging is in your future, and it is you have to have this book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Blogging, and Individual and Corporate Bloggers, May 7, 2007

By 

Mohan Babu "Globalization and Me" (Global) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blog Rules: A Business Guide to Managing Policy, Public Relations, and Legal Issues (Paperback)

The book make for an interesting read.

I found it intriguing how Nancy begins to blur the line between corporate bloggers (who bolg on their company's blogs) and individuals who also happen to be employees of companies. She points out that although corporate bloggers create a façade of independence by blogging outside work hours using personal resources, their views may be quoted as that of their employer. She elaborates on the topic in the sections on `Employee Bloggers beware: Blogging can get you fired/sued.'

One way for individuals to air their views in public would be to create explicit `Chinese wall' between their personal blogs and their professional affiliation, but this technique may not always be effective. This said, the challenges may not be as profound as the author makes them out to be:
Individuals have been writing articles, columns and books expounding their personal viewpoints, differentiating them from the "official" viewpoints of their employers by explicitly stating so. A similar protocol for blogging may begin to emerge. Until then, prudence and caution are in order while blogging.

4.0 out of 5 stars Berglund Center for Internet Studies Review by Jeffrey Barlow, April 25, 2011

By 

Berglund Center for Internet Studies - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blog Rules: A Business Guide to Managing Policy, Public Relations, and Legal Issues (Paperback)

Business readers may well find this a useful guide not only to the nature of blogging, but particularly to the dangers it may present to their operations. Many readers, however, will find it highly repetitive, often maddeningly so.

Blogging is, of course, a relatively new phenomenon, even in Internet Time. Despite its recent arrival, however, blogging has had an enormous impact. It has affected the way news is produced and delivered, and much complicated the formerly safely sealed corporate world of internal communications. Now, happy or furious customers and contented or disgruntled employees alike can convey their attitudes to potentially huge audiences almost instantaneously.

As Flynn points, out this means that on the one hand, businesses cannot neglect blogging as a new form of advertising, but must also beware the unmanaged or mismanaged release of corporate information. And negative results easily and quickly include damaging information cascading through the blogosphere, or perhaps most threatening of all outcomes, lawsuits or criminal charges.

For a full review see Interface, Volume 7, Issue 2.