How to Keep Out of Trouble When Blogging for Business

For example, saying that “Joe Doakes is a moron who probably eats goat meat for breakfast,” may be seen as more of an opinion-type statement. After all, your estimation of Joe Doakes is not a verifiable fact, and his breakfast menu may be considered hyperbole on your part. But saying that “in my opinion, Joe Doakes puts goat meat in his company’s products,” could cause harm to his company’s reputation...and trying to dress it up as your opinion may be as convincing as placing a top hat on a pig and calling it a gentleman. Will a retraction help? It depends on the laws of your state and how you publish the retraction.

Some things you can do. (1) Consider setting speech guidelines on your blog, where visitors can agree to certain terms (such as your right to edit or remove posts) before being given the opportunity to post comments. (2) If you’re posting to others’ blogs, be gracious about removing your post if asked to do so. (3) Ask yourself whether your business really needs you to position yourself as a Michael Moore-esque gadfly/crusader. If the answer is “yes,” have an in-depth consultation with an attorney to develop a strategy for handling these issues.

2. Copyright infringement. There’s so much fascinating, free stuff on other people’s blogs, isn’t there!? Can you use it? Well, yes and no. In many situations, what you see written on someone else’s blog is covered by copyright laws. This means that, just like with other published printed materials, only the author has the right to use it. There is an exception called fair use, which provides some guidelines as to permissible uses. Let’s use my friend, Lena West’s blog on technology issues, called IT Strategy Hotline, as an example. If I want to use a sentence or phrase from her blog post on social media to inspire commentary of my own, that’s generally permissible; if I take whacking great hunks of her content and just copy it as is, that’s less favorable. And worse, if I use Lena’s content in a way that substitutes for her products or writing - for example, if I set up my own technology-related blog or products—that’s one huge step even further away from fair.

Some things you can do: (1) Consider reaching out to the companies whose text or photos you want to use and ask for permission. (2) Be original. It is not a violation of copyright laws to express yourself on the same topic—the question is how you express yourself and whether you use someone else’s protected content to do it. (3) If someone claims that you have places infringing material on your blog, respond quickly, and consider removing the offending content.