Over the weekend I was asked why should a business blog? - this to me was an easy question to answer but it did spark a thought - why should corporate organisations encourage Blogging internally?

Now I am going to skip all of the competitive advantages and intellectual property arguments and come at this from the point of view that there should be internal blogs - by staff for staff.

What is a blog?

A blog is an electronic log of thoughts and ideas - a learning log is you like.

A blog in essence could be an electronic and informal way of sharing thoughts and opinions, the advantage is that it can be accessed and commented on by others that you allow access to. This means that blogs can be seen by others and in effect if done well can become the start of a knowledge base or knowledge management system.

One of the reasons why many corporate knowledge management systems fail is that they often require a rigid structure, meta tags, format etc and that is not how the human mind works - it is more free-form than that. What a blog structure can offer is the change to collaborate (comment) is keyword search-able and can be tagged with keywords at a later date if required. Blogs can also include photos and videos showing problems and solutions.

Accessibility

Many blogs can be accessed (published to) via email or text message - so even when an employee is out in the field they can contribute, and if the company firewall allows - they can access it on almost any device. Indeed I do most of my blog reading on my phone when travelling or waiting for meetings.

How do you use blogs internally?