Does Your Employer Know That You Blog? Why Not?
December 16th, 2004There is long running debate in the blogging realm about whether bloggers should be up front with their employers about their blog. The answer to the question shouldn’t be that hard. If you want your employers to know about your blog, then just put your name on it. They will find you. If you don’t want them to know about your blog, then do it anonymously, don’t publish from the office, and refrain from talking about anything remotely correlated to your job. You “should” be safe (nothing is 100%).
I’m going to argue that librarians who blog professionally should tell their employers about their blog. I’m not talking about personal blogs. Those should probably be left anonymous (remember, they will find you). But professional blogs that discuss our profession should be a welcome enhancement to your work. If done right, it will boost your “face time” with the administration. It will show them what you’ve accomplished through your weblog (it may even push the library to start one of their own - and guess who will be in charge of it?).
Example: Karen Coombs. While figuring out why she should renew her domain name, she had an unexpected conversation with her boss:
“Then my boss mentioned that she had been reading my blog while I was at Internet Librarian and asked “do you know how many people link to you?” in a sort of amazed way. It seems she had Googled my blog title in order find it and found much more. I’ve done this myself but not since August. I did it this morning and my reaction was “whoa!”.
Karen’s boss reads her blog! Fantastic. While I’m not sure if Karen told her about it first or she found it herself, the important part is that her boss reads it. My boss doesn’t read my blog, but I show her posts every once in a while just to keep her informed that I still do it. A few possible positive outcomes of showing your organization your blog:
1) They can use it a PR tool, which benefits both the blogger and the employer.
2) They can utilize your knowledge gained by blogging, if they want to start their own. Of course, RSS goes along with this.
3) By blogging about the library profession, one is forced to keep current. You can become an expert in a particular area and utilize that knowledge for new projects and initiatives.
So, does your organization know about your blog? Is your blog on your resume? Use the power of blogs to market yourself to your administration and don’t be afraid of a little publicity. Get out from behind that desk and work it baby.