It's time to launch the last day of this week at the IAOC blog, we will talk about tracking tools and practice but also probably sharing some additionals thoughts on the topics of the previous days, time has not always been so easy to find to say all we wanted to say, so this will be a good opportunity to add some ideas.

See you tomorrow.

It's also right in France, as Tom and Octavio already said it for their country, it's not always so easy to get informations on internal blogging experience, mainly because if it's internal, then it's secret...

I won't be talking here about  employee blogging experience as the one of Microsoft in France, I rather consider this as external communication as soon as the blogs are open, which is the case with Microsoft France.

I've been recently interviewing Didier Masse, e-Communication Manager at Steria in France to learn more about their experience in internal blogging, which has been very positive in term on internal circulation of information but also helped raised new projects thanks to sharing ideas.

As PR pro, I've been using blogs to share informations with our clients regarding ongoing campaigns, which is also a very good way to store informations and to keep track of what has been said...
At Blogging Planet, we've been using a blog to develop a private and secure platform to help a european PR Manager communicate with his local agencies, and by this way store and share information on one single place rather than sending out tons of emails and receiving though so many answers, difficult to track, difficult to store...

We've also been seting up a private blog for the french users club of Genesys that the marketing manager is using to keep in touch with the customers and inform them about the coming events, studies available, seminars, etc...

I wonder if internal blogs might have more impact on corporate communication or more added value than external ones, let's see in the futur where the trends will go...

I'm afraid I posted already about blogging internally.

SME's are using blogs following different strategies:

- Isoco, a software and internet solutions company, uses blogs as intranet to share knowledge about the industry.  IT department is in charge of updating the blogs.

Internal blogs should come with a change of attitude of the corporation.  If a CEO launches a blog to let the company what he is thinking but doesn't allow -or welcome- comments, then the "so-called" blog will be something different, but not a blog.

It is all about openess, transparency and a candid interest for what everybody have to say. And I mean everybody.

It is not about reading CEO's speeches.  You have emails for that.  Blogs need discussions.

I must say that I like blogs as intranets, but I love wikis to organize events and share documents internally.

Wikis are able to create a "community" around a document and let people to actually edit, rewrite and complete it.

But if blogs are hard to explain, wikis will be the "next stage".

Let's go step by step.

While Internet blogs grab all the headlines, the potential impact of internal blogging has been relatively ignored.  There is no question that internal blogging (and let’s not forget internal RSS feeds) has the potential to make a major contribution to any corporate organization.

 

Internal blogging can amomgst other things:

* Help the collaborative work process

* Improve knowledge management across the firm

* Provide the firm with protection against the loss of employees

* Provide employees with the right information instantly.

 

These opportunities could have a major impact on the productivity and profitability of any organization.

 

Finding examples of successful internal blogging is difficult as companies often view this as a competitive advantage or have no interest in sharing their experience.  There are many companies in Ireland who have internal blogs, I know of many in Irish technology firms, but the organizations I approached were reticent about sharing their experiences – even though they were very positive about it.

 

As a result, let me use my company as an example of an Irish company using internal blogs.  Cape Clear Software has had formal internal blogs for the past three years.  We use them in a variety of ways and we’re already seeing many benefits.

 

Internal Communications

Although our intranet was not created using blog software, it has since 1999, been published using the same format as a blog with plain HTML files published in reverse chronological order.  The intranet looks like a blog and it inclues entries on everything that’s happening within the organization.  It provides a single source of information on every event, press releases, news story, initiative as well as personal milestones such as new babies, weddings etc.  As someone who has been involved with many failed intranet initiatives, this has been a roaring success.  Most employees have the intranet as their home page (it’s set up as default by our IS organization) and we get constant feedback on entries.  We are currently planning to replace the current HTML structure with a blog platform in the coming months.  The main advantage of moving to a formal blog structure is the automatic provision of RSS feeds which staff can subscribe to and then they will be automatically updated on new events etc.

 

Collaboration

Our engineering organization has been using blogs since 2002 as part of their development process.  There are a number of active blogs covering a range of subject areas such as discussions on new features and updates on specific projects. The blogs ensure that all our engineers are current on the status of any project and have an opportunity to participate in the engineering planning process.  We also have specific blogs for different product releases which are archive once the product is shipped.

 

These development blogs have the additional bebenfit that new employees can quickly get up to speed on projects, status and issues by reading the archived posts.  These blogs also publish internal RSS feeds which provide immediate updates to the entire organization.

 

Knowledge Management

We use a number of internal blogs as central repositories for information on a specific topic. These differ from the development blogs because instead of focusing on a project they act as a single point of access for stories, resources etc. on the a specific technology area.  

 

The advantage of using a blog is that because all that information is published in a blog format it is presented in a consisten manner and is automatically archived and searchable over our internal network, making it simple to find relevant information when it's required. This is a major departure over the traditional ways we managed useful information from a whole host of different formats.  Now there’s a single view that is accessible to everyone and with the published RSS feed that information is disseminated rapidly to the right people.

 

 

Although we're a software company it's not hard to see how these same blogs could be very useful in any firm.  Consider a PR agency.  They could have a blog per account or account team, which provides a central resource for all information on an account. So it would include reports on client meetings, project updates, latest materials, measurement etc. The result is a much simpler and faster reporting process with the added benefit that the agency is protecting itself from the inevitable loss when employees leave, because now there is a repository of account knowledge available meaning that new and existing team members can be skilled up in a fraction of the time.

 

Although internal blogging is often the unsung hero, it has the potential to make a material contribution to the bottom line of any organization. I’m glad to report that many companies in Ireland are already embracing internal blogging.  I forecast that for many organizations it may have a greater impact than the much publicized corporate blog.

Do European corporations view internal blogs as a way to make employees more effective or as a waste of time, are internal blogs in multi-national companies being written in English or in the local language.

Since we are talking about internal blogs, the situation on getting information on this terms is a little different from external blogs. We know of IBM, challenging it´s employees to blog, we have heard of Sun's approach to get their people into it, but this is mostly external blogging again (although both companies provde internal access/aggregation to these topics). Too much public information is not available on internal blogs - at least for me.

So, talking about my perspective and experiences, I have recently setup an internal blogging plattform for my company. Goal of this blog is to gather and share creative ideas, files, documentations and to bring multinational teams together. At least virtually.

For other internal projects I would rather prefer wikis instead of blogs, since they offer much more collaboration features and give all readers the possibility to add content, not only as a comment, but inside the article. I have seen a presentation of Ross Mayfield on Les Blogs in Paris about his product socialtext, which could be a tool of choice for internal wikis.