Many corporations now have their own blogs as a platform to market themselves and spread their knowledge of their respective business practices.
For this reason, RIMS hosted a session on the numerous risks of blogging. Speaking were Christopher Sloan of Liberty Mutual, Mark Flannery of Caterpillar and Andy Steggles of RIMS.
Andy pointed to the fact that blogs, though most times useful to companies, pose a great risk because of user-generated content (UGC), privacy protection issues and data breach worries. Other issues to worry about when operating a company blog are:
- Defamation
- Unfavorable remarks
- Infringing material
- Potential disclosure of confidential information
Chris pointed to the fact that every company using a blog should, at a minimum, monitor UGC (such as comments on the blog) and use tools like IceRocket and Google Alerts to keep up with what people are saying about your company on the internet. In fact, one of these devices helped alert a company to a bomb threat, the information for which was posted on the internet by the person in question. A man in the audience at this session shared with us the story of how Google Alerts helped notify his company of the impeding bomb threat.
“Because of Google Alerts, we were able to apprehend this person within 24 hours of this serious threat being posted on the internet.
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Chris Sloan then pointed to the following legal considerations each company should consider if they choose to operate a blog associated with their business.
- Privacy and confidentiality
- Copyright and trademark infringement
- Data security and data breach laws
- Record retention and electronically stored information
- Submission guidelines and moderation
“Whatever you do online, remember to protect your brand,” said Chris Sloan.
And protecting your brand can prove priceless, as Mark Flannery stated:
“Defaming comments on blogs can affect stock price and sales,” he said. “Financial risk is far more damaging and more far reaching than effects of defamation suits or data breaches.
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While IceRocket and Google Alerts can be useful, their results aren’t timely. I would recommend, monitoring Twitter (e.g., Twitscoop) for mentions of a company’s name. (Lots of companies already do this–Comcast, Zappos.com, Southwest Airlines to name a few.) Or try Friendfeed which can monitor social networking apps (e.g., LinkedIn and twitter) as well as other services (e.g., delicious).
Great advice Joseph — thanks for informing our readers!