Tuesday, April 26, 2005

#2 - after a blog is installed for corp level communication emails, a company can start branching out into more sophisticated uses. i have always found it odd that a company is willing to pay money for a conference call hosting service and to pay extra for the hosting service to record the call for later playback. With a blog and simple recording equipment, a company can save a nice chunk of change. Effectively, the company will perform a "podcast" and store it on a centralized blog site. Call it a "corpcast". As with the corp communication blog, a "corpcast" post will enable the 360 degree communication benefit. People come to the site, listen to the "corpcast", then via comments, they pose questions/views that can be responded to by the original speaker or by other listeners. often, during these corp conf calls q&a sessions are held to obtain further insights. quite often, there are very few questions. with the "corpcast" blog, people will have time to listen more carefully to the presentation and then, ask more probing questions. they get all of this for much less the cost of a conf call hosting service. not only can audio files be archived on a blog, but video files as well. as i write this series of blog uses, businessweek has launched a blog about blogs. in a post today, they offer up a CIO article about blogs. nothing ground breaking in the article and certainly not much detail on the multiple uses for blogs inside the firewall. if they really want insight, they should stay tuned to this site. 99 more uses to come.....=D   11:10:50 PM    comment []

i have put this off long enough....in my opinion, until people can "see" how blogs can be used, they will have difficulty grasping the real value in them. from the first time i came across blogs, it was very apparent to me that blogs had an enormous potential as a business tool. not just to "brand" a company or have an ego site for a CEO - no, a blog can be a wonderful tool for many business processes. over the next few weeks, i intend to finally list my "101 uses for a blog in business ( and other places). will we really find 101 specific uses? who knows? i have a highly developed sense of imagination and a couple of decades of experience in corporate settings. i won't know for certain until the list begins, but i kinda like my chances. more than once, i have stated that the use of blogs is only limited by a person's imagination. if anyone is paying attention out there, jump in at any time. #1 - blogs should be used in place of any organization centric emails. this can be at the corporate level, at the division level, at the factory level or at the functional level. there is really no benefit in sending out a 1 way communication that generally clogs up a person's email inbox. especially for brain dead people that attempt a "reply to all" response that sends another email to hundreds or thousands of people. no, instead of pushing communication, utilize the blog to draw people in. blogs and their comment/trackback/RSS capability enables what i call 360 degree communication. simply, in a blog post, people have the ability to centrally discuss and examine the meaning of a message. people can seek clarification from the post author, people can weigh in with opinions/insights/observations. this can be especially important for a global company. trust me - what we interpret in north america does not always mean the same in Europe/Asia/Japan. with a blog and RSS and trackback, people can discuss a post in a centralized manner without the unnecessary sending of multiple emails on the same subject. archiving is also an important feature of a corporate communication blog. sadly, email is a very key part of a company knowledge repository. unfortunately, it is quite difficult to search email to find exactly what is needed. sure, there are some software attempts to perform this function and i have even heard of a company that can "mine" email. however, these efforts pale in comparison to a blog. by it's very nature, a blog is a archive of information that is captured in a daily bucket. want to know what suzy said about the picnic last month? simply scroll the blog back a month and look on the day that suzy always uses for company communication. better yet, look at the blog for the picnic project and find even more info, but that's another reason to discuss later. to wrap it up...the very first thing that a blog can do in a corporate world is streamlining communication. instead of pushing, communication now pulls people in. like a town hall, people can come and get the news, discuss the news and visit their neighbors. also, like the "old timers" at the town hall, the blog is the corporate memory - always available to inquire about what happened last week/month/year. if a company did nothing else with blogs, centralizing communication will save them time and money. 12:18:07 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 ridingo. Last update: 5/2/2005; 10:54:47 PM.