Still More on Corporate Blogging Policies

I previously posted on Michael Hyatt's efforts to put together corporate blogging guidelines for employees at Thomas Nelson Publishers (More on Corporate Blogging Policies). 

Michael has posted the second draft of the guidelines at Corporate Blogging Guidelines, Draft #2 that follows comments by readers of his blog that the first draft was too formal and legalese, while being, in some respects, unclear or missing some important items such as "who owns the content".

My comment is that you can't conceive of every contingency or eventuality in a written policy. Those who try will surely be disappointed when reality comes crashing down.  Sure, you want to make the policy readable and not overly legalese (after all, what's the point if the people that the policy applies to don't understand it?).  But policies that try to plan for every eventuality will be exceedingly lengthy, unreadable and, likely internally inconsistent.

UPDATE: Radiant Marketing Group has a post (Toby Bloomberg on Corporate Blog Guidelines) on corporate blogging guidelines that links to a comprehensive list compiled by Toby Bloomberg at Diva Marketing.  The post, Corporate Blogging Guidelines, has some great links to some helpful resources and examples.  Again, I caution against the "cookie-cutter" approach here, but these resources are certainly helpful in showing what others are doing and what types of things have been included in these guidelines.