FAQ

1. What is the purpose of these guidelines?

• Create a training tool
• Set a baseline of best practices
• Educate companies that are new to this
• Simplify a complicated topic

2. Are these rules mandatory or binding?
No, these are best practices for developing your own internal guidelines. The Blog Council is not a trade association or standards body, so we don’t have the mandate or authority to set binding rules. We help companies learn from each other and develop best practice recommendations as a community.

3. Are you regulating blogs or blogging?
No, not at all. This is an open source training tool for companies that want to learn the right way to interact with blogs. We are teaching and sharing our experiences.

4. What is the Blog Council’s role?
We are a volunteer group of companies that share insights and experiences with each other. We drafted this document to make it easier to share our learning with everyone.

5. How do I use these guidelines?

• Discuss these model policies with everyone involved in social media:
  marketing, communications, legal, HR, sales, customer service, etc.
• This document supports existing company policies and is not intended to supersede them.
• Customize them to fit your organization’s specific needs and operations.
• Create a training program to share them company-wide.
• Share them with your agencies, consultants, and contractors.
• Post your version to our library to help other companies develop policies.

6. Are the disclosure guidelines just for blogs?
No, these guidelines are useful any place where your employees are commenting or participating in a conversation. They are useful for all social media, and in particular any time there is a question of personal vs. corporate voice/role.

7. Are you accepting feedback?
Yes. We welcome and invite all interested parties to add their opinion and contribute toward improving the guidelines. We also invite you to add your own version to a public archive we have created.

8. Can I adapt these checklists for my own organization’s needs?
Yes. The Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 to view a copy of this license.