Thursday, March 19, 2009

Sun's Blog Rules

Another interest story from Ragan was the interview with Terry "tMac" McKenzie, senior director of employee communications at Sun. Sun is of course a leader in employee blogging starting with the COO, Jonathan Schwartz and the well-known policy. A couple of topics in the interview struck me as particularly interesting.
Terry summarized the policy as
1. Be interesting -- including be controversial but responsible.
2. Don't be stupid. Follow SEC rules, don't slander, etc. (Is that like "Don't be evil"?)
3. If you don't follow #2, you are on your own if you get sued.
"We are all about sharing and open systems," she said.
In the same e-newsletter, Ragan offers a three hour social media boot camp. If you think that is audacious or on the other hand, too long, just watch the interview with Terry that covers a lot of the ground in just a few minutes.
Another part of the interview dealt with the disappointment and posts related to Sun's not making a best places to work ranking. Many of these rankings depend on an employee survey, a subject of research interest with me so I will follow up. Maybe Sun has some of its own surveys beyond the proprietary one used for the best places ranking. The best places survey is known to have a significant trust component.
BTW, I learned from Vida Killian -- Thank you! -- that Dell does not have such surveys with respect to social media impact.

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