The Risks of Blogging to Your Professional Career

This post was submitted by Ann Murray from The Kids on the Internet.

I recently wrote about the benefits of blogging to your professional career, but what happens when your personal blog begins to potentially have negative repercussions at your job? This might happen if you blog during work time (or alternatively, if your boss simply believes that you are blogging during work time) or if the content of your blog delves into company matters.

Not On Your Time: Blogging During Work Time

 I once had a great boss who respected and actually encouraged the fact that I also freelanced by writing for several blogs on the side. However, one of my co-workers wasn’t so “great” and so he proceeded to rat me out to the boss after I probably overshadowed him on some media outreach strategy (or perhaps the problem was the fact that I contributed to a big blog he aspired to write for).

Regardless of my co-worker’s motives, he had sent a link to my blog to my boss, and the truth was out; I occasionally, but mostly during lunchtime and on downtime, created or cleaned up posts on my personal blog during the regular workday. Keep in mind that these periods of time took less than 10 minutes at a time. To add to the nastiness, my blog’s time stamp was off mark, making it appear that I was blogging during work time more so than I actually was. The talk from my boss quickly came, but luckily, I was already leaving to much greener pastures.

This led me to the conclusion that I should 1) not blog from work 2) tinker with the timestamp so that it did not reflect the times I was actually blogging, or 3) get a job blogging. I ultimately chose number 3 and my life is much weirder, but for those of you who haven’t yet made or aren’t interested in that leap, you must take up the former strategies. Set aside some time before work, during lunch, or in the evening to blog. If you choose the lunchtime hour, however, you must either alert your boss or utilize your own laptop to write. Alternatively, if you strongly believe that your blogging does not get in the way of your daily work tasks, then I suggest a shadier strategy: get rid of the time stamp on your blog. That way, the timing of your posts is untraceable.

And by the way, that co-worker who ratted me out? His own personal blog has a case of the mysterious missing time stamp, so I guess I can attribute this tactic to him.

The Dangers of the Boss’s Google Alerts: Blogging About The Company

You are a big fan of Google alerts. Nothing makes you happier than when your inbox signals that someone, somewhere made mention of your blog. So what makes you think your boss doesn’t feel the same way? He/she may also have a Google alert set up to let him/her know what is being said about the company throughout the internet. In fact, many companies hire PR agencies that make it a point to systematically scour the web for mentions of any client. This means that whenever you post about that crappy transaction you had at work, or the annoying co-worker in the next cubicle, your boss just might be reading it.

Many companies have set up rules directed at employees regarding blogging about the company. The enlightened ones encourage it and foster it, primarily because, from a PR perspective, an organic blog post about the company is like a golden nugget of public relations and branding.

Then you get into the territory of Starbucks; The blog Starbucks Gossip stirs venti-full cups of company gossip each day, and most of it is severely damaging to the company brand. The blog is a public relations headache. But imagine that you had a similar blog about your agency, or even a few watered-down posts bemoaning a new company policy. Just one post is enough ammunition for your employer to fire you; or, as several law sites suggest, force you out of the position as opposed to outwardly firing you. This is because, allegedly, it makes the company look bad to let you go simply for blogging.

Employers may garner negative attention for firing employees for the content of their blogs. Legally speaking, however, private employers may have the right to discipline or terminate an employee for what the employee writes in his/her blog. [GCGLaw]

Alternately, your company might be so clueless about blogging that they will take a no-holds-barred approach and fire anyone anywhere who blogs. It’s stupid and does nothing for branding, but it has happened (see below).

Regardless of whether or not you ultimately hope that your side-blog will lead to a full time blogging career, reap monetary benefits, or help you land that next amazing job, you must first safeguard your current position; because, seriously, who has the time to blog when you are busy searching for that next paycheck? Because you never really know if your boss or that jealous coworker is reading your last blog post.

Fired-for-blogging stories:

• Perspective: I was fired for blogging
• Beware if your blog is related to work
• CNN Producer Says He Was Fired for Blogging
• List of Fired Bloggers

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Comments

[mudge]

I never post a blog during business hours; and I operate under a nom de blog; and I never mention my employer by its correct name. Am I paranoid? Damned right I am! And remember, even the paranoiac may have somebody following sometimes... So I remain circumspect about this, especially as my views on business and politics and the business of politics and the politics of business are probably 180 degrees divergent from the suits so far above the trenches in which I toil. If my employer has public relations issues it will never be from me. I just like eating and paying my subprime mortgage too much for that!