A corporate blog is often the first step in adding social media to your marketing communications plan.  It’s a good choice–there’s a relatively high level of control, a relatively low level of risk, and there are plenty of low-cost or free options from a technology perspective.

Even so, it can be pretty nerve-wracking when you’re just entering the blogosphere.  Particularly if you haven’t blogged on a personal level.  Or sometimes, even if you have blogged personally–if you’ve been extremely open in your personal blog, you may worry that you can’t successfully make the transition from personal to corporate blogging.

We often recommend the following resources to help neophyte corporate bloggers.

1. The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil. This is probably the original and definitive book on corporate blogging. Concise, clear and written in common business language, it’s a great resource for marketers who are new to blogging in general.

2. The New PR’s Corporate Blog List Wiki.  This is certainly not a complete list of corporate blogs, but it is an excellent list of many of the best ones.  Peruse, add to your RSS reader, and learn from those who are already doing it well.

3. Look at the corporate blogging policies for a few large brands.   Companies like IBM,   Yahoo! and many others have official policies for corporate blogging.   These guidelines can be a good starting place for developing your own company’s blogging policy.

4. BNET’s White Paper on the PR Value of Corporate Blogs. Because it’s always good to remember why you’re doing what you’re doing.

5. TechRepublic’s article on 10 Ways to Be a Blogging Failure.   Because it’s also always good to know what not to do.

Got any good recommendations to add to the list?  Drop those hot potatoes in the comments.