Thomas Nelson Publishers

Thomas Nelson Publishers is the World's largest publisher of Christian books and materials. Founded in Scotland in the late 1700's, Thomas Nelson is currently headquartered in Nashville, TN. Its President and CEO Michael Hyatt was on the forefront of the blogging phenomenon. As Michael began to blog and see its potential for his company.

He promoted blogging for his 675 employee company by creating a blog index on Thomas Nelson's website. The purpose of the index was to create interest and traffic for the employees' blogs. Hyatt encouraged employees to blog about what was going on within the company and its products. His goal was three-fold: to raise awareness of Thomas Nelson, to contribute to its industry, and to allow the public to get a picture of what goes on within the company. He created an easily navigable site that contains the blogs of all the employees. "House Work" is the blog index of Thomas Nelson's employees. This website is updated anytime an employee posts on the blog. It contains the basic information and first few lines of the blog, allowing for readers to skim and read the ones that are of interest.

Michael Hyatt also set guidelines for his employees' blogs. The guidelines cover different aspects of blogging. For example, users are required to use their real name and add a disclaimer to the end of every post explaining that their ideas are individual to themselves. Hyatt encourages to write often, advertise if they wish, be nice, and respect secrets and copyrights. If an employee has any question about whether a post might be in question, Hyatt reminds his employees to remember the handbook.

Thomas Nelson's blogging policy is found at Michael Hyatt's personal blog and has created an interesting communication style for one of the nation's largest trade publishers.