Blogging at DrKW

What are the advantages and disadvantages of implementing internal versus external employee blogs in a corporate setting? Are there certain industries where one of these strategies makes more sense?

Internal Blogs
Internal Blogs are great communication and information sharing tools within the company. Internal Blogs encourages spontaneous information among employees and can be shared at any time and most importantly it removes the pressure because employees are not required to post information within a specific time.

Advantages & Disadvantages – The informal nature of the Internal Blogs allows the employees to express their views more freely when compared to any external communications, which is subject to careful review and edits prior to release. This encourages free flow of information. In some cases, Internal Blogs serves as an alternative for meetings. Especially, when a company has many branches spread across different parts of the country and/or employees are operating at different locations, blog serves as a tool to connect employees for virtual meetings. Internal Blogging serves as a ‘Knowledge Management Tool’ as it increases employee participation and collaboration, promotes dialogues outside the team and enables to find different sets of ideas across divisions. In some cases, solutions/different alternatives to a business problem can be found by encouraging an integration of conversations. Internal Blogging provides ‘unlimited’ space for sharing interpretations and different points of view, which can be used for further debates. It serves as an easy tool to share and serves as a means to understand an integrated view of the organization as a whole. Internal Blogging promotes ‘organizational knowledge’ & ‘builds trust’ by serving as a record of the organization’s thoughts and conversations. Internal Blogging is secure compared to External Blogs, due to the safeguards that are put in place to ensure more control. Although Internal Blogging has many advantages it does not reach the customer and obviously fails to capture the public views of the company or the product. In some instances, information contained in the blog could be biased and one-sided because it is usually posted by an SME within the company or someone that is very close to the issue.

Internal Blogging is suitable for service/tech industries where there is a mass of expert knowledge. Service/Tech industries solely rely on expertise. By sharing their knowledge to specific issues in a blog site, employees could create their own job aid for newer employees and/or for current employees. This could also serve as a ‘free’ training guide.

External Blogs
External Blogs are publicly available sites where internal employees, customers, any other interested party has the ability to share information or read the posts.

Advantages & Disadvantages - One of the biggest advantages of External Blogs is that it includes the customer and incorporates the public information whether good or bad. External Blog serves a ‘communication tool’ where information is being transmitted from customers/public to company or vice versa. It can be used to announce upcoming new products or services, clarify customer concerns and react to public criticism. Given the informal nature of the blog, companies can communicate with the target market at a more customized or personal level when compared to a formal level. This in turn could builds positive relationship with the customer and could improve the marketing and branding activities. Therefore, an External Blog could serve as a ‘Sales & Branding Blog’. Like the Internal Blogs, External Blogs also serve as an organizational learning tool because now they can also learn from the customers. Sometimes customers may have better information/suggestions about the products because they tend to use the competitors products. An External Blog provides an opportunity to learn about the competitor’s information and the customer’s feedback/psychology about the various products. Therefore, it enables companies to harvest more knowledge from the external environment. Although External Blogs present the above advantages, there are some risks associated with it. Given the open nature of the External Blogs, firstly it is not safe and secondly it is prone to inappropriate or negative information posted by customers/public. This is turn could affect the brand name. So, if a company decides to use External Corporate Blog they must analyze these risks and take a calculated well-informed decision.

External Blogging is suitable for companies that are looking to develop a network or a community around themselves. Secondly, it is also suitable for companies that are developing new products or services because customer feedback and input is very essential in the product development process.