On Wednesday, I saw this headline in a financial trade publication called Finextra:

Actiance: All your LinkedIn profiles belong to us

The accompanying story talked about compliance and social media software vendor Actiance, which had announced some new features for financial and insurance companies who must comply with a regulation that governs “static content” (like profiles) posted online by certain kinds of financial advisors.  Actiance made no claim about owning anyone’s LinkedIn profiles — and nothing in the regulation says that an employer owns an employee’s profile, either. 

But the headline made me start to think — who does own a LinkedIn profile that helps a marketer, or sales person, or PR manager, or any other employee of a company in the dual job of managing their own career and accomplishing their job objectives? 

So I asked.  I asked the readers of the Help a Reporter Out newsletter for answers and tips from human resources experts, lawyers, compliance experts and others who knew the facts.  And 80 of them responded with over 10,000 words of advice and explanation.

I plowed through it all, and wrote the longest blog post I’ve ever written, picked the best comments (8 out of more than 80), and posted it all on The Distributed Marketing Blog.  You can read the article by clicking here.  It’s divided into shorter segments, so you scan it quickly to find the information you want.

It includes tips on what to do if you’re concerned about employer monitoring of your LinkedIn and other social media sites, how to handle it if you are the employer and you’re concerned about social media activities by some employees, and tries to take a close look at some of the evolving rules and regulations about social media.

I hope you’ll visit The Distributed Marketing Blog and take a look at the valuable insights so many people shared with me when I asked.  (That’s what I like best about social media — the ability to reach out to smart people, who can provide the kind of information you just can’t get anywhere else.)