How to stop a disgruntled ex-employee blogger

Canadian Vawn Himmelsbach at IT Business shares some helpful info on how to stop a disgruntled ex-employee blogger.

Companies cannot simply dismiss the issue of an ex-employee saying disparaging things on the blogosphere. Blogs are very powerful in spreading stories, especially the juicy and interesting ones ex-employees are apt to tell. Left un-countered, word can spread like wild fire via through the blogosphere and into resulting stories in the main stream media.

Here’s a number of tips from Vawn on how to control the damage.

• Companies should be monitoring on a daily basis what’s being said about them on the Web through keywords, such as company name, key products and even competitors (easily down via RSS) May even want to monitor employee names.
• Try to deal with the person human to human – try to get dialogue going.
• An ex-peer of the disgruntled blogger may be best for dialogue, ie, developer to developer, as opposed to an HR person.
• Keep the lawyer profile low or you risk slowing down the process of real dialogue.
• You don’t always have to address the blogger. There be some cases where ignoring them may be best.
• Look at any contract the employee signed limiting what they may discuss once they leave the company.
• Legal action should be a last resort.
• Scare tactics such as an official letter that tells them to ‘cease and desist’ can easily backfire with the letter being published to the blogosphere, and only exacerbating the problem.

One thing Vawn doesn’t mention is the necessity of an effective Internet presence. An effective corporate Internet presence is not a Web site or press releases issued across the net. It means having a trusted and reliable voice or, better yet, multiple voices on the blogosphere. An effective Internet presence requires corporate employees to be blogging.

Disgruntled employee stories spread on the blogosphere because they are ‘interesting and juicy.’ When there is no one from the company with a blog that outsiders regularly follow to explain what may really be going on, the employer’s side of the story does not get spread by other bloggers. The story in favor of the disgruntled employee is all that’s heard.

A blog, as a means of handling disgruntled employees on the net, may be a bit frightening for corporate heads and PR/communications professionals. But times are changing. Practicality requires doing things differently than they’ve been done in the past.