When I talk about the potential for blogs in a business context, people often scratch their heads. "But blogs are kept by individuals; what do they have to do with businesses?"
I usually say that companies are made up of individuals. Promote the people, and you promote the companies.
But there's also a less obvious way in which blogs can be used by businesses -- as intra-blogs. I'm not trying to coin a phrase here, especially not one as ugly as intrablogging, but I'm hoping to draw parallels with intranets.
Just as an intranet is internal to a company, accessible only by its employees, so too can blogs be created for a select group of users, and locked out to everyone else. This private corporate blog then offers a way to interact regularly to other staff members on a given topic, using a many-to-many communications model.
A blog wouldn't necessarily revolve around an individual, either. It could pertain to a project or team.
Blogging software makes web publishing easy. And commenting on posts is easier still. It's less hassle, certainly, than trying to track a bunch of email threads and replies.
This was the experience of Nicholas Tang, director of operations at NY-based Community Connect:
"For several years Mr. Tang viewed this daily surge of e-mail messages as an unpleasant but necessary part of his job managing a team of eight engineers," explains William O'Shea in an excellent article in today's New York Times. "Then, a few months ago, he began using an alternative to e-mail, a Web log."
Mr. Tang's blog has essentially proved a success -- but the Times article acknowledges that switching from email communication to blogging does run the risk of increasing the information glut, not decreasing it. "Opening a pipeline to comments from employees can produce a torrent of information, essentially defeating the purpose of the tool."
Like everything else in the business world then, if you do start a corporate blog, make sure you manage it well.
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