The other day my better half astonished me … once again … in his usual gentle way.  Seemingly out of nowhere he began his own blog: The Navigator’s Reflections.  Not only does it capture a few of his wise (and of course gentle) thoughts, it has a window into a smattering of his gorgeous photos.  For the latter, I’d recommend clicking on the slideshow in his left nav bar; the thumbnails don’t do the photography justice.

Needless to say, while delighted to learn he was blogging, I was put out with his software choice.  Blogger.  Not only am I a die-hard fan of WordPress (having experimented with a number of platforms, including Blogger), I associate Blogger with spam.  But he, ever logical, pointed out that Blogger makes it simple to work with his photo platform of choice, Picasa.  Score one for Blogger; score much more than that for the blogosphere.

I recently wrote some comment guidelines for the primary site I manage, and was surprised by the paucity of information on this topic. Of course you’ll pull up thousands of entries if you do a Google search. But I wanted authoritative, meaty stuff.

In fact, what I most wanted was a book covering the topic. However, neither of the blogging books I own did. One is even on corporate blogging.

The implication is that guidelines don’t matter that much — that things like search engine optimization are what’s really important. For many blogs, I expect that’s true, but not all.

I’ve used to manage a dicey blog (now history) where guidelines were a lifesaver. Early in that blog’s life, I opened my email one day and discovered about ten comments submitted the previous evening by one person. The first four were flames, but then came the fifth. It began, “I just read your guidelines….” and proceeded to be quite rational, even calm, after that, suggesting that I not post his earlier comments.

For others looking for meta guidelines, I did happen across one helpful summary. It’s several years old, but cuts to the chase with four rules used by all of the corporate blogging guidelines they reviewed:

• You’re personally responsible
• Abide by existing rules
• Keep secrets
• Be nice

From: Policies compared: Today’s corporate blogging rules

If your gut is telling you write guidelines, pay attention. Even though I couldn’t easily find a subject authority, there are plenty of good examples found with a quick search. Just add a dollop of common sense, and you should come up with something that will help you sleep better at night.