Internal Blog: Knowledge and Communication in One Package

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

  Communications Management   Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned  

Blogs. Love ’em or leave ’em, they do serve a purpose when people aren’t just venting at each other and posting self-indulgent musings. When used within a corporate setting, they are still vulnerable to the same kinds of abuses, but internal blogs (as opposed to outward-facing, real world interactive blogs) are also great constructs where staff can have a forum that provides another way in which to tap into the intellectual and experiential resources that each employee has to offer.

Before You Invent the Wheel
The first question before you even get started though revolves around whether or not an internal blog is appropriate for you and your associates. Have you researched other options (for example, wikis) to determine if they provide a better social platform for your organization to connect? If you consider a blog to still be the right answer, it’s important to develop a business case that demonstrates its value to the powers that be.

As you pull together notes for the case, there are a number of questions that should be addressed:

• What is the reason/purpose behind the creation of a blog? Do you think it will provide a haven for sharing ideas and information? Will it a place for problem solving and storing solutions that can be discussed and elaborated upon?
• How do you foresee the blog’s implementation? Will it work for the entire …

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