Personal Blog Guidelines
Maintenance Essentials encourages employees to participate in the online community and supports blogging as a valid method of communication. These Guidelines have been developed for employees who maintain personal blogs that contain postings about Maintenance Essentials business, products, or fellow employees and the work they do. They are also applicable to employees who post about the company on the blogs of others. The guidelines outline the legal implications of blogging about the company and also include recommended best practices to consider when posting about Maintenance Essentials.
Legal Parameters
The following two bullets cover your legal responsibilities and non-disclosure obligations. Failure to abide by these two guidelines can result in serious ramifications for individual bloggers and/or individuals who post on the blogs of others.
Legal Liability
When you choose to go public with your opinions via a blog, you are legally responsible for your commentary. Individual bloggers can be held personally liable for any commentary deemed to be defamatory, obscene (not swear words, but rather the legal definition of ?obscene?), proprietary, or libelous (whether pertaining to Yahoo, individuals, or any other company for that matter). For these reasons, bloggers should exercise caution with regards to exaggeration, colorful language, guesswork, obscenity, copyrighted materials, legal conclusions, and derogatory remarks or characterizations. In essence, you blog (or post on the blogs of others) at your own risk. Outside parties actually can pursue legal action against you (not Maintenance Essentials) for postings.
Personally Identifiable Information
Personally identifiable information refers to information that directly identifies you or any other individual, such as name, postal address, telephone number and e-mail address. Disclosing personally identifiable information without the written authority of the related individual may be in conflict with our Privacy Policy and may result in disciplinary action.
Company Privileged Information
Any confidential, proprietary, or trade secret information is off-limits for your blog as agreed by each employee in the company Confidentiality Agreement. The Maintenance Essentials logo and trademarks are also off-limits per our brand guidelines. Anything related to Maintenance Essentials policy, inventions, strategy, financial information, products, etc. that has not been made public cannot appear in your blog under any circumstances. Disclosing confidential or proprietary information can negatively impact our business and may result in disciplinary action.
Press Inquiries
Blog postings may generate media coverage. If a member of the media contacts you about a Maintenance Essentials related blog posting or requests Maintenance Essentials information of any kind, you are required to direct each request to the company CEO for an official response.
Best Practice Guidelines
These recommendations provide a road-map for constructive, respectful, and productive dialogue between bloggers and their fellow employees. These are not ?rules? and thus they can?t be broken. There is no hidden meaning or agenda. We consider these to be ?best practices guidelines? that are in the spirit of our culture and the best interest of all employees, whether they blog or not. We encourage employees to follow these guidelines, but it is not mandatory to do so. It?s your choice.
Quality Matters
Use a spell-checker. If you're not design-oriented, ask someone who is and take their advice on how to improve. You don't have to be a great or even a good writer to succeed at this, but you do have to make an effort to be clear, complete, and concise. Of course, "complete" and "concise" are to some degree in conflict; that's just the way life is. There are very few first drafts that can't be shortened, and improved in the process.
Be Respectful of Your Colleagues
Be thoughtful and accurate in your posts, and be respectful of how other employees may be affected. All Maintenance Essentials employees can be viewed (correctly or incorrectly) as representative of the company, which can add significance to your public reflections on the company (whether you intend to or not).
Get Your Facts Straight
As a Maintenance Essentials employee with intranet access, you have the opportunity to contact the Yahoos who are responsible for the products, services, or other initiatives that you may want to write about. To ensure you are not misrepresenting your fellow employees or their work, consider contacting them before posting. This courtesy will help you provide your readers with accurate insights, especially when you are blogging outside your area of expertise. If there is someone at Maintenance Essentials who knows more about the topic than you, check with them to make sure you have your facts straight.
Provide Context to Your Argument
Please be sure to provide enough support in your posting to help Yahoos understand your reasoning, be it positive or negative. We appreciate the value of multiple perspectives, so help us to understand yours by providing context to your opinion. Whether you are posting in praise or criticism of Maintenance Essentials, you are encouraged to develop a thoughtful argument that extends well beyond ?(insert) is cool? or ?(insert) sucks?.
Engage in Private Feedback
Not everyone who is reading your blog will feel comfortable approaching you if they are concerned their feedback will become public. In order to maintain an open dialogue that everyone can comfortably engage in, Maintenance Essentials bloggers are asked to welcome ?off-blog? feedback from their colleagues who would like to privately respond, make suggestions, or report errors without having their comments appear your blog. Bloggers want to know what you think. If you have an opinion, correction or criticism regarding a posting, reach out for the blogger directly. Whether privately or on their blog, let the blogger know your thoughts
Clients, Business Partners and Suppliers
Protect Maintenance Essentials clients, business partners and suppliers. Clients, partners or suppliers should not be cited or obviously referenced without their approval. Externally, never identify a client, partner or supplier by name without permission or discuss confidential details of a client relationship.
Recognise & correct mistakes
Be the first to respond to your own mistakes. If you make an error, be up front about your mistake and correct it quickly. In a blog, if you choose to modify an earlier post, make it clear that you have done so.
Use your best judgment
Use your best judgment. Remember that there are always consequences to what you publish. If you're about to publish something that makes you even the slightest bit uncomfortable, review the suggestions above and think about why that is. If you're still unsure, and it is related to IBM business, feel free to discuss it with your manager. Ultimately, however, you have sole responsibility for what you post to your blog or publish in any form of online social media.
Don't forget your day job. You should make sure that your online activities do not interfere with your job or commitments to customers.
