PB021: Conduct a Policy Review [Day 21 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog]

How to Conduct a Policy Review For Your Blog Today's episode is about some policies or operating standards you might like to consider for your blog. Having policies can save you time, help you to make better decisions, and make you more transparent to your readers. Terms & Conditions by Chris Yates on 500px In this Episode You can listen to today's episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we'd also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). Today we talk about: Why you need blog policies and operating standards 6 areas to consider having a blog policy for (plus one BONUS area) How to get specific information about your legal requirements as a blogger Further Resources on How to Conduct a Policy Review For Your Blog Information about Creative Commons licences Information about the DMCA Further Reading: The ProBlogger Privacy Policy DisclosurePolicy.org Writing your First Pages: About, FTC Blogger Disclosure, Privacy Page: Art of Blog Blogging and Social Media Policy Example: About Money How to Create a Privacy Policy for your Blog: Road to Blogging Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast episode 21, where today, we're talking about policy, which seems a little out of place in some ways, but it's a really important area to think about. My challenge to you today is to develop a policy or some sort of an operating procedure for a particular area of your blog, and I'm going to suggest seven different areas to ponder. You can find today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/21. Let's get into today's episode. Hi, this is Darren Rowse from ProBlogger. Welcome to day 21 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. We're on that final home stretch now, just 10 days to go. Today's challenge may sound a little odd, but I think it's really important to do. It's to spend some time looking at some policies, operating standards, or procedures for your blog. This sounds very corporate, but it's actually important. For some of you, it's actually a legal requirement for you to put some attention into some of these things. Some of you live in jurisdictions where you are required to have a privacy policy or where you're required to have a disclosure policy if you're working with brands in some way. For others of you, it may not be a legal requirement, but it might just be good form to be transparent with your readers on how you operate. For others of you, it's not so much about how you look or whether you're complying with the law. It's actually about putting processes in place that help you to deal with issues that might crop up so that when you are faced with these issues, you've already made the decision on how you respond to them. Hopefully, it'll become clear which of these fits in with the different policies I'm going to talk about in a moment. I want to go through seven different areas—in fact, I want to suggest seven—that you might want to consider creating a policy in. I do touch on six of these in the workbook for 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, but I want to suggest a seventh as well. The first one is copyright. Are you willing for other people to use your content in some way? This might mean you put a Creative Commons license on your blog, and there's a variety of different types, so you might want to do a little bit of research on that today.  If you're not willing for other people to use your content, that's okay. You might want to brush up your copyright notice. You probably want to do a little bit of research on that and there are posts on ProBlogger on that topic. You want to also put into place processes if you are using guest posters on your blog to ensure that they own the copyright of the material that they submit. For instance,