Almost any company these days, be it a family business or a giant corporation spread across continents, offers their employees Internet access. Be it for public relations, sending emails from one office to another, or simply documenting for office work, your team will go online. It is also not a secret that your employees have more or less of a personal Internet presence. They have personal blogs, read and comment on others’ pages or access their personal Facebook accounts from work, and some of these activities might have an unfavorable impact on your business, if not taken care of properly.

Use of personal blogs

The owner of a personal blog can usually be tracked down and, most often, connected to the company he or she works for. While it may sometimes be obvious that the views of your employee are not the same as your company’s, this can sometimes be misinterpreted. You don’t want a mechanic at your used car shop blogging about how he doesn’t like the idea of buying a second-hand car. Ensure that you either have a company policy, or have spoken personally with your employees in regards to what they are allowed to post online while they work for you. You don't want to impose on their personal freedom, but topics that would be harmful or damaging to your business should be off limits.

Commenting on other blogs

If the comment is not related to the field your company activates in, your employer shouldn’t use the company email address. However, utmost diligence is required when posting a personal comment in a sensitive field. You will never—or at least shouldn’t—see John signed as john@hp.com recommending the latest Dell laptop.

Respect intellectual property rights

Your employees should not indulge in copyright infringement activities, even on their spare time. And I don’t just mean downloading pirated software from your company server. An employee who steals content and publishes it on his MySpace or Facebook profile can put your company in a bad light.

Administering your corporate presence

This special section refers to whoever administers your company blog and social media accounts. All comments posted by your prospects should be answered in a timely manner. While some may not require an answer, they should at least be read and acknowledged.. Constructive criticism is always to be appreciated; the ideas should be forwarded as soon as possible to whoever is responsible and a reply should be posted whenever the issue has been taken care of. A press release or at least a dedicated blog post might be necessary in some cases. Some inquirers—like sales prospects or warranty claimers—should be directly forwarded to the corresponding departments.

Decide what can and cannot be disclosed

Part of the financial information of any company is publicly available, but some facts should not be disclosed. Classified information like the manager’s salary shouldn’t even be publicly referred to, not even remotely.

While this list is by far not exhaustive, it shows some basic ‘netiquette’ guidelines a company should follow with their online presence. As a rule, common sense should tell your employees whether or not they should do this or that.