Blogs and Wikis Behind the Firewall
Some organisations get blogging and others just don’t. Even now, to a lot of managers its still regarded as a corporate threat. What will people write on these blogs? How do we censor them? My short answer to that is mostly you don’t. You can probably fire someone for going over the line on their external facing (or even private) blog but you can’t control the conversation. Live with it and even learn to exploit it for your own benefit. Which brings us to what I see as real corporate blogging.
When I mention blogging to companies their mental model, or worldview, jumps straight to the fore with a defensive elbow learned in year 5 on the rugby field. But there are more ways to using blogs, and even wikis, within your organisation that has nothing in the slightest to do with the blogging I do here. This software can be used in ways you may not have realised.
OK hypothetically, you install a blog in Marketing, a blog in Human Resources, one in Sales and one for Management. Let’s keep this small to start so we don’t get overwhelmed with all this new information. The critical point is we don’t turn this into an internal facing corporate brochure of Marketing, for example. It needs to have some autonomy but you keep it under the loose guidelines that this is for the departmental area of relevant business. If that makes any sense. In other words, Marketing can constantly update their strategies and projects while Human Resources can churn over tidbits on where they’re making progress.
The reason this is going to increase your productivity is that an informed workforce is a more efficient and effective one. If a manager in Marketing knows what is happening in Sales and vice versa they will be more clued in than would otherwise be the case. The knowledge worker is only as rich in some respects as the knowledge at their fingertips. I should point out that at this stage I’m not just talking an information page on your corporate intranet - its a genuine blog with comments and functional communication channels. In reality you could easily set up blogs for specific projects that keep the entire organisation aware of where specific projects are progressing.
Take that a step further and you can start setting up wikis for collaborative work and knowledge capture.
Blogs and wikis are just software applications and its up to you how you install and implement their use. All I can suggest is you publish a set of corporate guidelines so employees are clear about what is not allowed, but be loose in your terms and liberal in your interpretation. This could be that semi-informal information rich communication channel that allows some critical cross pollination of ideas in your organisation. Put them behind the firewall and, if you water it carefully instead of hitting it with pesticides, watch the improvement. Marketing suddenly knows stuff about Sales and Human Resources. After all, how can you expect departments to work well flying blind?
April 20th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
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April 23rd, 2008 at 5:10 am
What is missing from the Corporate Blogging conversation is any talk of a measurable ROI. If you want Corporate clients to get on board with blogging you have to be able to show them how it will make them money.
The two easiest and most effective benefits to measure are Search Engine Optimization and Page/blog conversions.
If a company is doing paid ads, you can compare those keyword clicks to winning the same terms organically through blogging.
Employees need to be included as content creators as well. Check out this paragraph from last week in the Dallas Morning News:
“It’s clear that when it comes to traditional authority figures – whether they’re chief executives or heads of state – people trust them less,” says Mr. Edelman. “Employees are the new credible source of information. We have data that shows an employee blog is five times more credible than a CEO blog – and I say this as a CEO blogger.”
If you think about starting a client with a small project that focuses on some keyword phrases you will get a lot better future support when they start comparing traffic and conversions.
Best,
Chris Baggott
CEO/Co-founder
Compendium Blogware
www.compendiumblogware.com
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Yes I agree Chris, ROI should be right there from the beginning conversation on any web development project. Nobody should be building these things just for the hell of it anymore, for sure.
This particular article is about setting up a few internal departmental blogs and communication tools, so they are actually low cost (although maybe reasonable effort). What is the value of that cross-pollination of ideas?
In an outward facing blog what is the value of that caught disgruntled customer who you can apologise to and placate before they go away for life and take ten others with them?
I think that an acceptance of an intangible benefit is needed as well.
But fundamentally you’re exactly right. If something can’t be justified in business terms there will be major issues later on. If it can be justified in ROI then you’re definately not going to get that necessary internal support to keep it going.
And you’re right, this has to be people in the trenches not the management spiel that lacks credibility. And keep marketing tethered to the post as well, come to think of it. Nothing sells evangalism like a true believer. Find that / those true believers and support them.
I think with this short series of posts I had been attempting to coax the initial idea that this software can be used for whatever we want behind the firewall. Simple, cheap, effective communication tools. But then by the third article I’m saying OK if you’re comfortable with those ideas then how about an outward facing blog?! One that catches the disgruntled customer and turns them into an evangalist. In that case ROI is what I’d take to the meeting for support but the true value is probably the less tangible one IMO.
So many web solutions just dive because nobody asks the business questions first. Why a website? What objectives will this achieve? How will we know if its a success or a failure?