Enterprise blogging in practice cont'd

I said I would post a few more comments about this post yesterday. One thing to add is to make sure you read both the original and follow-up posts by Coté.

Now what I say here needs to be taken in the context of what I've said previously about corporate blogging and also these comments. Like Coté I don't think we should give up on enterprise blogging, but I do think many organisations are reinventing the wheel rather than building on what we already know about getting people to collaborate with technology inside the firewall.

In my previous life as a knowledge manager at Ernst & Young I faced similar problems with helping staff to develop and maintain successful knowledgebases that were components in the firm's award winning EY/KnowledgeWeb intranet. I know from direct experience that, just like a blog, running a successful discussion forum within an organisation requires ongoing effort both to create content but also to ensure sponsorship, readership and contribution.

However, I also had to spend a lot of time explaining to people why it was important to stay within the E&Y collaborative architecture so that the majority could contribute, access and search for content. Standards like RSS are excellent on the Internet where people use different applications to create and read public blog content, however this isn't necessarily a challenge faced within the enterprise. However, RSS can create problems where another standard platform exists (unless you can integrate the two of course).

So overall I see the challenges of enterprise blogging as a knowledge management challenge. The key to success is building on what we already know about getting people, process, technology and content to all work happily together.