Aeonscope | Corporate Blogging Experiences

Corporate Blogging Experiences

Introduction

I have been on a quest lately to improve communication within the corporate space. I have been primarily focused on using the latest social networking technology - namely, blogging technology powered by WordPress. I thought the following might be worth sharing in case it is of use to others.

Background

Five months ago, I instigated a movement at work by setting up a blog for my team which then blossomed company-wide (well, not really but I’ll explain more in a bit). I did this because I wanted a way in which to capture what I was working on as well as see what others were doing within the team. The idea was each of us is doing interesting things so lets share it. For example, maybe the problems that I am solving apply to something another person is working on and visa versa, maybe I learned a new way of writing code, or maybe I learned a new software trick that made what I do faster. I see blogs as a way to capture these nuggets of info that can be stored for future use as well as be easily searchable. It also serves as a way in which to record breadcrumbs of information allowing someone who is following your trail to easily pick up where you left off. If nothing else, blogs help foster a community. A way to make the job just a little bit more fun and interesting. That is the idea anyway.

To help build a foundation for those new to this type of software, I have given a tech talk, written documentation, created screencast tutorials, and provided many links for reference within the walls of the company. I spent a lot of time and effort making this possible because I believed in what I was doing and I also believed that the company get would become engaged.

In addition to the educational materials mentioned above, I have also been very active amongst all internal sites (which are roughly fifteen in total). In my team alone, I am the most active blogger posting things that I learn and develop on an almost daily basis.

To me the idea and its implementation was helpful and streamlined. However, the experiment did not turn out as I had planned.

Experiences

The problem was no matter how hard I tried to educate the company and its employees, only a handful made use of it. They would much rather stick to e-mail - which is overused in my opinion (see my post on Corporate E-mail Pitfalls for more info). The paradigm shift from e-mail to blogging (or anything that supports syndicated feeds) seemed too complex versus the status quo.

Because I view blogging as a way of life, I had no good answer to their objections. I view blogging as something you should want to try it out. The value is not necessarily realized by watching but by doing. This is HUGE hurdle to overcome because people need to get their jobs done and blogging can be considered wasted time.

My motivation stems from my use of what I write because if no one reads what I write then I will. As time rolls on, I might forget certain details and having a blog is an excellent way to go back in time and dig up something that I’ve done and might need to do again. That alone has saved me many times that the benefit far outweighs the cost. Even better, once you have written about it you can easily send a hyperlink to someone who might be asking you for advice.

Though I wish my passion for blogging had been shared by my company and fellow employees, I can not say that my experiences were purely positive. Out of the fifteen sites within the company today, only two of them are active. The rest have been abandoned. By this I mean that management has requested that all employees write weekly reports once a week that summarize what they have done, what they plan to do in the coming week, and any outstanding issues they might have had during the week. These reports can be useful but most are just badly formated noise. This counts as abandonment with no real involvement.

I remain optimistic, despite my particular obstacles, and hope that over time people will become more involved.

Lessons Learned

Choose software that is easy to configure, maintain, and use. My choice, as mentioned, is WordPress, but there are others out there that might suite your needs better.
Make sure some basic blogging guidelines are in place and people are aware of them.
Appoint a champion early on to lead the effort and do not take this lightly. Not only do you need a champion but one who has the official blessing and approval of management. This needs to be made known company-wide.
Start education early. Get people engaged and pick leaders from the various teams within the company to help you spread the love (so-to-speak).
Provide plenty of tutorials and examples. Make it really easy for those who are stubborn or resistant to change to jump in. Anything you can do to lower the learning curve, the better.
Do not let management mandate what people should or should not do. Any time there is a management mandate then it feels more like work and takes a bit of the fun out of it. This needs to grow organically.
Actions always prove louder than words. Lead by example. Give people something to aspire to but don’t make it so daunting that they will be easily discouraged.

Parting Thoughts

Check out an article by Path & Vinegar called Egos and Silos and Social Media. Food for thought.

Tags: WordPress, WordPress MU

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 Business

2 Comments to Corporate Blogging Experiences

Hi,
Thanks for mentioning Wikipatterns! I appreciate that you’re helping spread the word, and that’s great that you applied it to blogging!
Stewart Mader
Wiki Evangelist, Atlassian