Should employees be allowed to blog?

There’s been quite a furore recently over Forrester’s decision to create individual blogs for their analysts on a Forrester-branded platform, requiring them to ditch their own blogs in the process. Firstly to clarify. In an official statement from Forrester, they claim that their analysts can still write on their own blogs, if it is outside the areas in which they work. They are not saying, as many are reporting, that employees cannot run their own personal blog in any iteration. With this in mind, the question still needs to be asked of whether or not Forrester are missing a trick here.

On one hand, you can kind of understand where they’re coming from. If one of their analysts is writing about an area in which they work at Forrester, you can understand why they would want to keep this IP under a ‘Forrester’ umbrella. Running it in this way may also be more beneficial to the user : if you are reading an official Forrester blog, then you have added assurance that the information you’re getting is accurate and of high quality. It also allows you to more easily navigate through the Forrester site and discover other areas that may be of interest to you, which you wouldn’t necessarily get on a personally branded blog. An important consideration is also the fact that some employees who are running personal blogs may be monetising these. From a commercial point of view, you can understand that Forrester wouldn’t be too keen on their employees making additional income of the back of Forrester products, which they are already being paid to work on.

Bearing this in mind, I would like to make it clear that I don’t think any employer has the right to require its employees to shut down their personal blogs and redirect their readers to the company’s site. I don’t think any business has the right to ask this of their employees. I strongly believe that employees should be encouraged to write on their own sites,but what I do believe is that the employer has the right to ask that if an employee is blogging about something pertaining directly to their work (citing research etc..) that the company in question is mentioned and linked to in the blog post. This helps to bring your company and your employees to a whole new audience and only helps you to establish yourself as an authority or leader in your area.

Who are the faces of your business?

Jeremiah Owyang is the obvious example here, that has been cited in many blog posts about this topic. I was an avid reader of Jeremiah’s blog. Formerly employed by Forrester, Jeremiah’s blog would often be my first point of contacting for finding out about new research at the company, or I would see him tweet about it. This ultimately led through to me clicking onto the Forrester site, so does it really matter what the original source is if the end result is the same? Lately I’ve had a few conversations regarding the issue of employees blogging on their own personal sites, including a couple that have been told they’re not permitted to do this. This, to me, is insanity. This, to me as someone who owns a business, is backwards.

We can be in no doubt that companies are no longer about the brand, the policies, the messages or USPs. Companies are people. People that have their own identities outside of the ‘corporation’, have their own ideas and opinions. Recognising this and encouraging them to be active outside of your existing business presence online can only be a good thing. Now I’m not advocating the approach that when it comes to employee’s use of social media, this should be completely uncontrolled. If someone is tweeting during company time, blogging about something that pertains to your business, then this should be disclaimed. It benefits both the company and the user on the other side – everyone has clarity. What we need to do is to figure out the best practice for encouraging employees to use social media in a way that actively benefits the business (while this is on company time). Your employees are your ambassadors.

This is something that Forrester have recognised to an extent, as the new policy does include the fact that they want more analysts to embrace social media tools, for the purposes of research and with training on how best to use the tools. This is most definitely a good thing. If you’ve recognised that your employees are using social media, then the best you can do is to provide training into how this can enhance their existing work. Now lots of fingers are being pointed at Forrester for getting their specific blogging policy a bit wrong. The truth is that they’re not the only company that’s making this mistake. Many are still finding their way into how to handle employee’s use of social media. Many (myself included) are figuring out how this can best be encouraged in a way that benefits all parties.

The issue I take with Forrester is that they’ve ultimately misunderstood what their IP is. They think it’s the research but they’re wrong, it’s their people.