Weblogs from a business perspective

by Lilia Efimova on October 9, 2003

I just posted edited slides for my internal presentation on weblogs in business. I don’t think that there is much new in it, may be just my way to explain weblogs :)

The presentation has two parts: explaining weblogs and discussion on weblogs from a business perspective. Below is a summary of some “business” slides.

What’s in it for business? Releasing and “channelling” personal passion

  • Personal nature of a weblog
    • Provides context to understand and interpret ideas
    • Supports trust, reputation and relation building
  • Personal motivations to write in a public space make employee knowledge and aspirations visible, supporting articulation of ideas that are difficult to get other way
    • Experts and their expertise become more visible
    • Documented ideas can be collected, stored, processed and reused company-wide
  • We tend to trust people more than we trust machines or organisations
    • Personal touch in customer-relation building
    • Authentic internal communication

Choices

  • Tools vs. voices
    • Weblog tools can be used to support organisational processes as any other tools, but then we risk loosing advantages of weblogs as personal voices
    • Weblogs can be passionate uncensored voices of employees, but then we risk information leaking and creating “wrong” image
  • Business vs. individual
    • If we impose organisational goals and rules weblogs are not likely to work
    • How can we benefit from weblogs if we don’t?
  • How do we balance organic and personal nature of weblogs and business goals and needs?

Specific questions

  • Intranet weblogs
    • If there is enough weblog readers to motivate weblog writers?
    • How weblogs integrate with everyday practices and existing tools?
  • Public weblogs
    • Corporate weblogs=no personal voice: Will they be trusted?
    • Personal “work-related” weblogs
      • Are they censored? What do we loose then?
      • How do we insure that no competitive knowledge is leaking?
      • Should they be affiliated with a company? Hosted on a company’s web-site?
      • Who has copyrights?
  • Business model? Legal issues? Technology choices?

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/10/09.html#a788; comments are here.

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