OK, so there’s the inevitable step when a company wants to start a blog: what guidelines can you use to enforce best practice in this open communication medium?

On this my advice is simple – check the web. You are not alone and there are countless examples out there of blogging policies and codes of ethics.

For a good roundup, checkout what Forrester’s Charlene Li has to say on blog policies. For a more uptodate version, check out this from corporateblogging.info. They boil it down to four key principles:

“On four points, all of the eight most well-known corporate blogging policies agree — corporate bloggers are personally responsible and they should abide by existing rules, keep secrets and be nice. Those four principles are the core of today’s corporate blogging rules.”

If you are in the B2B tech space, then you should also look at BEA’s guidelines and those of IBM.

Now get out there and let them blog!