Blogs and Wikis in the Business World Definition and Solutions

• What are blogs?
• What are wikis?
• What is social software?
• Why should I care about blogs and wikis?
• How can blogs and wikis benefit my business?
• What blog- or wiki-related challenges should I watch out for?
• What types of blog technologies should I know about?
• What types of wiki technologies should I know about?
• What blog terminology should I know?
• What wiki terminology should I know?

Why should I care about blogs and wikis?

Company blogs are fast becoming a corporate commonplace. Because they're inexpensive to set up and maintain, enterprises of virtually all sizes have them. Modern corporate websites look naked without at least one executive blog. General Motors has a corporate blog page; Wal-Mart maintains several. Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, blogs; so does Boeing executive Randy Baseler. Blogs are now an essential part of mainstream business. Consequently, if for no other reason, you should care about blogging because the chances are very good that your competitors are doing it.

In the corporate world, wikis are emerging as flexible, easy-to-implement systems for shared-document collaboration and content management. These systems are inexpensive (if not free), relatively easy to implement and accessible from a Web browser. Because they're browser-based, wikis present virtually no learning curve, and they work as well behind the firewall as they do on the World Wide Web. Instead of exchanging e-mails and attachments, corporate wiki users can work together on private webpages in near real-time. Wikis serve as unusually dynamic communication environments that can help corporate teams remain agile and competitive.

How can blogs and wikis benefit my business?

The most obvious benefit derived from a blog is its ability to communicate a corporate position or message to the public. Through blogs, companies can also share expertise and experience in a way that positions the organization as an authority and a resource, and ultimately promotes the brand. Microsoft, for example, uses its blogs to provide tips and technical information to its customers, to answer customer questions and to host conversations among product users. Blogs have an advantage over websites for this purpose, because they're much easier to update. But perhaps more important, a blog can accept reader responses and comments. The result is a kind of conversation that can give a company invaluable information about how the public sees its products and services.

Purists will shudder at this suggestion, but no business can afford to ignore the marketing potential of corporate blogs. Unlike other traditional direct marketing media (mail campaigns, website advertising, e-mail), blogs generate feedback from customers, which companies are finding useful for taking the public pulse. Blogs can help a company refine its approach to the markets it knows, and even tap into markets it may not have considered.

Internally, blogs can be a convenient means for harried managers to get to know their employees and partners better, and to get a better sense of their customers' needs. Internal blogs are also proving to be useful communication tools that link members of distributed project teams, especially when those members are based in different time zones. They can save time by substituting for face-to-face meetings among parties with crowded schedules. And they can create a sense of community within a company.

Corporate wikis, on the other hand, provide project teams with a highly flexible medium for internal collaboration and document management. They are a central location for managing meeting notes, team agendas and company calendars. The content on a wiki can be updated with no real lag time and little to no administrative intervention. Wikis are browser-based, so distribution is automatic, and they can centralize a range of corporate data types-everything from spreadsheets to PowerPoint presentations to PDF files.

Wikis can be used to create "wiki communities" of special interest and limited accessibility within an organization. Companies are increasingly using wiki communities as ongoing collaborative spaces, typically devoted to particular products or product areas. IT organizations are using wikis to develop and maintain the documentation for their in-house software and systems.

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