At the Aloha Social Media Summit in Boulder, CO this week one of the persistent issues was that of online behavior in the social web.

How do you separate your personal self from professional? What are the rules and netiquette? In a group brainstorming, we crafted some rules of conduct for your consideration.

Thanks as well go to my peers on LinkedIn who prepped me to facilitate this discussion by responding to my question on the Answers section of the most useful of all social media services.

1. Ask yourself, are my personal and professional online personas the same or separate? Am I my corporate brand or am I an employee of a corporate brand. What is my online personality and how does that reflect my professional reputation?
2. When developing an online persona, it’s important to initially strike the appropriate balance between your personal and business lives for both you and your business and be consistent moving forward.
3. Since you can’t separate who you are online without using an avatar, consider always being you everywhere (use your real name) and never leaving anything online that can hurt your reputation or your company’s standing.
4. Set goals for your personal brand and reveal only that which is consistent with your persona.
5. Consider cultural differences in this new, global medium.
6. Choose relationships wisely. Have clear criteria for who you “friend.”
7. Regarding religion, politics, sex, drugs/alcohol and racial conversations — if in doubt, leave it out.
8. Remember that the “net never forgets” – what you put online may be read by clients, your children, friends and enemies forever.
9. Know what is being said about you online – use a reliable reputation monitoring service – and have a strategy for damage control.
10. Learn, baby, Learn! Seek out experts and remain open to new ideas about what social media can be in the ever-evolving online landscape.
11. Build and grow the most appropriate personal and professional networks that are a clear reflection of your persona by providing regular, quality (not purely self-promotional) content that’s of value to your connections.
12. Make sure you understand the privacy settings of every social site in which you participate.

There ultimately exists the ability to make the final decision as to how to conduct yourself online. Use these as guidelines for your own decision-making.

Here’s another version of Top 10 Social Media Mistakes from Aaron Strout at Mzinga.

Contributors to this set of considerations includes:

Andy Beal, Marketing Pilgrim and inventor of Trackur

Dave Taylor, Ask Dave Taylor

Jim Thibodeau, StaffScapes, Inc.

Shama Hyder, Online Marketing Expert, After The Launch

Klaus Holzapfel, ConceptBakery