To start a corporate blog, you need to find a corporate voice. There’s just no way around it. The tone should be less formal than marketing language, but not as informal as your friend’s Live Journal. So how do you strike that balance? It’s a question I’ve wrestled with and worked with more than a few companies to try and answer, and the answer is different for each one. I’ve pulled together a few things that have helped me in this process.

• Do research into other blogs in your industry and beyond to get a better feel for the space

• Write at least 3 intro posts at varying tones and get people involved in this step, picking the right one for the blog

• Consider how you talk to an acquaintance who you don’t know very well; that’s a good guideline for the level of formality

• To keep blog entries consistent and avoid multiple editors pulling the blog in different directions, have one point person for the blog.

• Blogs can be easily changed in a matter of minutes. Consider the procedure to be to post and change if there’s a problem instead of letting each entry get into a long editing process.

The most important part of this process is to make a decision and stick with it, avoiding the paralyzing need to make it completely representative of the company and in ideal marketing language. Just remember, each blog entry is not a company press release and will not be viewed as such.