Blogs and Wikis in the Business World Definition and Solutions

Blogs and Wikis in the Business World topics covering definition, objectives, systems and solutions.

By John K. Waters
Fri, July 06, 2007

Page 3

What blog- or wiki-related challenges should I watch out for?

The most successful blogs are conversational, personal, newsy and friendly. Individuals blog about their passions, and a corporate blog should have the same feel. No one visits a blog that sounds like a press release or an annual report. And direct sales pitches are simply off-putting to blog readers.

Some companies encourage their employees to blog because of the buzz that can be generated about the company in a wide-ranging conversation. More bloggers means more hits, which means more people are talking about your company. Many consultants even warn against establishing a corporate blog culture in which only executives post.

However, corporate blogs must exist within boundaries established by management that aren't necessary for the individual, free-range blogger. You don't want a corporate blog to become a spigot from which your company's proprietary information gushes into the wide world. Neither do you want your employees posting embarrassing photos or making untoward comments. Without a clearly defined corporate blogging policy, this very useful tool can become a source of trouble.

As for wikis, at first blush they may seem to offer, well...chaos. But corporate wikis are not free-for-alls. Even the world's largest wiki, Wikipedia, has systems in place for source and version management. However, the structure of a wiki is essentially organic; once it's set up, a wiki is controlled by its users, not administrators. This can present some challenges. Consequently, corporate wikis are primarily implemented behind the firewall-which makes sense. Unless you're managing an open-source software project, there's little reason to publish the work-in-progress documentation of a company's activities on the Web. Also, limited-access wikis are simply less likely to be misused.

As with blogs, companies need to define their wiki policies. Some basic guidelines-what might be thought of as wiki etiquette-are required around things like deleting or modifying the contributions of others. The idea is to, literally and figuratively, get everyone on the same page. The last thing you want is team members keeping their own copies of earlier versions, which would negate the benefits of wiki-style interactions. Corporate wikis are most effective when the number of users is small, and the content is focused.

What types of blog technologies should I know about?

Atom: Another type of Web/news feed format.

Blog search engines: Used to surf the blogosphere. Technorati is one of the most popular; Google and Yahoo also provide blog search engines.

Hosted blog sites: Websites like Blogger, Blog.com, Vox, Typepad and Xanga handle all the heavy lifting, allowing multiple individual bloggers simply to sign up for the service and start blogging.

Movable Type: A popular, free (for personal blogs) blog publishing system. The developers of this system, Six Apart, also created the TrackBack feature.

Permalink: A link that points to a specific blog posting. The link is "permanent" because it remains intact even after the posting has slipped off the front page and into the blog archive.

Ping: A notification to another blogger that you have linked to, or commented on, something in that person's blog. (Ping is an acronym for Packet Internet Grouper.)

RSS (Really Simple Syndication/Rich Site Summary): Also called a Web or news feed, RSS technology syndicates website content and sends updates to the end user via e-mail or through a news-feed reader application. Used to provide users with the latest updates from news sites and blogs.

TrackBack: A system that notifies you that another blogger has mentioned your blog posting in his or her blog.

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