Corporate Blogging Policies: Yahoo!
I haven’t covered this subject for a while. The Yahoo! Personal Blog Guidelines (PDF format, 3 pages, 24 KB) are based on common sense and are not particularly innovative. Except on one point: the Yahoo! policy is not only applicable to employees writing on their own blogs, but also when they write on other blogs. In other words, a Yahoo! employee who wants to post a comment about his company on any other blog must follow Yahoo!’s guidelines.
Here is an excerpt from the introduction.
The Yahoo! Personal Blog Guidelines have been developed for Yahoos who maintain personal blogs that contain postings about Yahoo!’s business, products, or fellow Yahoos and the work they do. They are also applicable to Yahoos 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 Yahoo!.
There is another interesting point in these guidelines. A Yahoo! employee can freely write about his company — providing he follows the rules. But, like at Microsoft, if he’s contacted by the press, he’s not allowed to answer and must pass the request to Yahoo!’s PR agency.
Finally, as you all know, Google and Yahoo! are two big names fighting to get as more money as they can from advertising. But they’re also rivals in the world of semantics. Google is now a common verb (Have you googled XXXX to know more about him before next week’s meeting?”). But at Yahoo!, as you were able to see above, the word Yahoo has become a noun used to designate an employee. Here is another example, picked from the rule which asks employees to get their facts straight before publication.
As a Yahoo! 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 Yahoos or their work, consider reaching out to a member of the relevant team before posting. This courtesy will help you provide your readers with accurate insights, especially when you are blogging outside your area of expertise.
