Writing blogs can be time consuming and can take time to succeed. Building credibility and trust takes time. So don't expect that, if and when you launch a blog, that it will be an overnight success. Blogging is a form of publishing and most publications that do succeed generally take a long time to build up a sustainable readership. You must be willing to put in quality blogging time week in, week out. A good idea might take up one paragraph, but could have taken a day or more to research and think through.
You need to consider issues of proprietary or confidential information, and how to handle potential defamatory language. These should be policies that your agency already has in place for other forms of communication.
In government, we must adhere to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Some government blogs such as USA.gov's Gov Gab state that it is unable to post comments from children under the age of 13, and invites children to email them rather than post public comments.
The emergence of blogging has brought a range of legal liabilities. Employers have fired their employees who maintain personal blogs that discuss their employers.
As informal as blogs are meant to be, if they're appearing on a government domain, they're official government communications. They're on the record and fair game for being picked up in the mainstream media. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have a blog you just need to think carefully about how to use it as an effective communications tool that can benefit both your agency and the public.
posted by Alenjoe
@ 2:03 PM
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