Are you ready for an internal organizational blog?
- Dudi Rozental
- Feb 1, 2008
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 13
A blog is a website where entries ("posts") are written about experiences and news. The contents are visible to internet users for reading and usually also for commenting. The entries are arranged on the homepage and category pages, with the newest topic at the beginning and the oldest at the end.
The blog is one of the characteristics of internet culture. In the past, some saw it as a personal diary that differs from those written in the pre-internet era, in the public connection with the world it offers. In the Web 2.0 era, a different trend dominates, perpetuating on the internet blogs of business people, blogs of well-known politicians, and blogs of creators and academics that serve as a platform for publishing artistic and literary works, opinion and critique articles, and academic papers.
Many organizations are beginning to use blogs as a tool for knowledge workers to document their knowledge and share it with colleagues and customers. A blog serves as an effective tool for knowledge management. Many organizations struggle with the issue of locating tacit knowledge in the minds of knowledge workers in the organization and making wise use of this tacit knowledge. For this purpose, many organizations invest resources in operating and implementing organizational knowledge systems. A blog, or a personal site of a knowledge worker in an organization, can provide an open environment that invites and encourages the knowledge worker to share their knowledge, gather around their blog a group of experts from the same field, and thereby lead to the creation of new knowledge when the worker initiates it themselves.
Many organizations in Israel and abroad that allow the operation of internal blogs use them for developing new products, for efficient and unmediated communication with internal and external customers, and more.
In what cases is it advisable to implement organizational blogs in your existing web system?
When there is a need to improve organizational communication and the way significant messages are transmitted from management
When internal PR action is required
When headquarters wants to externalize the rationale behind business decisions
When the organization is decentralized, and there is a physical disconnect between employees at different sites
When strengthening connection to the organization is required and can be achieved by presenting a personal perspective
When building trust in the system is needed • When organizational transparency is necessary
When there is an expert whose opinion is important and who knows how to write
If one or more of these conditions occur in your organization, there is reason to consider implementing organizational blogs as a means of communication.
As an initial threshold condition, verifying that the organization is generally mature enough to accept a process of sharing and transferring knowledge through blogs is necessary. This organizational maturity is derived from a knowledge management project, a supporting technological platform, and habits of using the solution.
Blogs can be an internal platform for communicating project progress and your organization’s successes and failures. With blogs, both the modest and the egotistical emerge winners.
The egotistical person can show their good work to all employees. These people like to reveal to other employees what they already know, allowing access to the knowledge they accumulate.
The modest employee, on the other hand, who simply wants to ensure that their colleagues have all the vital information needed to perform the work in the best possible way, too, gets to publicly present the qualities of their knowledge when needed or on a regular basis.
Unlike usual situations, beginnings are easy in writing and managing a blog, especially an organizational blog, but continuation is much harder. An internal organizational blog is not written for entertainment; it has a clear purpose – managing employee interaction, knowledge management, information sharing, marketing, or innovation.
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