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Some Observations on Intranet Blogging

One company that I've been spending some time at has an intranet blog for its employees, but I see a few factors that inhibit adoption, and these issues span both technology and culture:

• RSS feeds cannot be read using consumer versions of a feedreader like Bloglines or NewsGator for security reasons. This means that most people (even junkies) have to revisit the site for updates to comments and new posts. A bit of a drag ... you mean we have to go to the corporate CIO to get NewsGator authorized for the corporate Outlook software stack (I'm not picking on NewsGator btw)? These kinds of things are just effort killers for intranet blogging though ...
• Many corporate cultures view blog reading as a waste of time. Evangelism is still needed to get blog reading accepted into a corporate culture. If you can point an organization to a high-quality blog in your industry, this goes a long way to dispelling the myth that blog reading is a waste of time. In fact, people can get a lot of consolidated information and synthesized analysis by reading blogs.
• Many corporate cultures still view corporate email, newsletters, and enterprise systems as the means for handling, disseminating, and using information. Things like wikis, social bookmarking, and blogs are not well understood in terms of their productivity enhancing aspects. When I recently showed someone how bookmarking tools could be used on the Internet as the equivalent of Post It Notes, there was a huge "a-ha event" that took place. We often tout tools in conceptual terms and with respect to their Web 2.0 social aspects. In reality, sometimes to get these tools to take, you simply have to show people the money.

Do you see any other barriers to intranet blogging?

Update (12/20/05): Folks still trying to learn about social media in large corporations should check out Jeff Nolan's post here.

Double Teaming Non-Profits Into Blogging

Michael Stein recently shared some of his thoughts on resistance to blogging in not-for-profit environments (source in comments section here):

I have met a lot of resistance when I encourage my not-for-profit clients to blog. I think one aspect of that resistance is that a relatively small number of people enjoy writing and do it easily. I think that "blogging evangelism" needs to include a component that demystifies writing as a skill and provides resources to make new bloggers feel competent about their writing.

I thinks Michael's right on here. He also has a lot of good information on non-profit stuff at his site. One post that caught my eye was a post here that addresses non-profit bloggers and creating content.

I also resonate with Michael's comment about the need for "blogging evangelism" within a non-profit organization. For example, even though 21Publish is deeply rooted in the core blogging platforms for Amnesty International US and Amnesty International Germany, significant ongoing evangelism is needed. Stefan recently posted a presentation he gave to a broader audience of Amnesty International webmasters here. This presentation is an example of the ongoing evangelism that is required to get the various Amnesty organizations blogging successfully.

So I encourage folks interested in the non-profit space to continue to double team on getting those non-profits to blog. That goes for you too, Future MBA Girl (a blogger for two years now making a move to go to a management consulting firm focusing on the non-profit sector). People with your background can add value to non-profit endeavors while also increasing the number of management consultant bloggers out there.