Employee blogging

Blogging is more than popular, it’s revolutionary. Blogging has turned ordinary Joe and Janes into celebrated authors, and celebrities. However, for every Arianna Huffington, there are millions of Joes and Janes that have contributed one or two posts and subsequently never return again to the blogosphere, and hundreds of millions that will never try blogging.

Consider for a moment some telling statistics:

         ·  3+ billion unique users

         ·  250+ million blogs (some estimates exceed 200m, but blogs come & go)

By the numbers, the number of blogs to unique users is about 1 in 10. However, many active bloggers have multiple blogs. However, those that regularly write and contribute to a blog is a fraction of that 1%. Employee blogging statistics are far less impressive.

If only a fraction of individuals write and blog on the Internet, what percentage of workers are truly motivated to blog while performing their job?

Consider the results of The Intranet 2.0 Global Study 2010 (526 respondents):  

         ·   53% of organizations have blogs on their intranet

         ·   18% of organizations have enterprise wide intranet blogs

Less than one-fifth of organizations have made available blogging to all employees. IBM is one example, and less than one-quarter of one percent of employees are active bloggers (Intranet consultants Prescient Digital Media help organizations establish employee blogging, and executive blogging). Thomson Reuters is no different. Unlike IBM, Thomson Reuters actively promotes blogs and blogging on its’ intranet home page, but less than 1% of employees have set up a blog (see Intranet blogs hit critical mass).

However, for every Dickens and Hemmingway there have been millions of failures, and billions who have no interest in picking up the proverbial pen and paper – or keyboard and blog. For every Bob Woodward and Huffington, there are millions who try writing, and fail (or simply drop it), and nearly 2 billion who are not even interested.

As I wrote in Intranet blogs hit critical mass the low adoption rate of blogs by employees shouldn’t surprise anyone: most employees are not writers, let alone citizen journalists, and have work to do when they are at work. Don’t be fooled though, employees do want to hear more from the executive suite, and they are eager to learn more about and better understand their business, and the direction of the organization. Employees want to read blogs, they just don’t want to write them.


CONTINUE READING:

Intranet blogs hit critical mass

Digital Workplace Content Lessons (Employee Blogging @ Cigna)

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6 thoughts on “Employee blogging”

  1. Toby,
    I agree that it is a minority who want to and are able to blog. In BT we try to make it as easy and as usable to do http://markmorrell.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/5-simple-steps-to-a-good-intranet-wikiblog/ to minimise the obvious barriers that might put people off.
    Blog Central http://markmorrell.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/blog-central-bts-intranet-blog/ uses WordPress and is as simple as sending an email or writing a Word document.
    While the number of blogs is over 500, that is a fraction of the total workforce in BT of over 100,000 BUT 80% of the blogs have been updated in the last month at least once.
    So, it seems in BT if you do start a blog, people tend to stay with it. We're finding bloggers are from the mainstream of BT after early adopters and usage IS increasing.
    Blogging is a slow burner and not an overnight success.
    Mark

  2. I wonder if is because potential organizations have a very narrow understanding of “blog” as a term ?
    Is it considered just a tool for internal communications for use by C level or mid level management – in other words blog as its original derivation, an intranet 'web log' type of journal ?
    If one of my colleagues was asked if they blog at work, they might say no, but actually they use the simple blog tool built into MOSS2007 as part of our 'Project Management Information System' to post regular “project updates” – does that count ?
    A whole raft of KM guru's will tell you about the benefits of using blogs for 'story telling' as a knowledge transfer tool – rather longer articles used to build a contextual narrative around a particular business process (I wonder how many organisations are pushing this use case!) – would that count ?
    As with any requirement, user adoption has to be examined. What does the organization gain from Subject Matter Experts blogging compared to the individual SME doing the writing? Will they be given time to do this ? Is it just another 'side of the desk' task thrown at them ? Are personal and organizational benefits measured ?
    So many questions – perhaps you could run one of your survey's !

  3. I think employees should take advantage of having a pro-blog. I don't really care about the 7.5% blog-to-user ration. If an individual is smart enough to build his blog around a particular or targeted niche, blogging will be very beneficial.
    Blogging alone cannot stand by itself. You need to “market” your blog. Make connection to a particular community. I have a couple of buddies who have attracted employers through their blog. For sure, the blog wasn't the tipping-point – they have solid skills. But the blog highlighted their skills and they become suddenly visible to the online community because of their blogs.
    Of course this is not an overwhelming data but it surely does give us example.
    I am a part of SQL Server community and we do establish connection through online and offline events. We connect via twitter, facebook, and through our blogs.
    If you use your blog to address certain problems and offer solutions for them, chances are you will get noticed.
    Don't blog for the sake of having a blog. Your blog should have a purpose. It should fill a certain need.
    Blog is not the first step. Community involvement should be the first one. Make connections and establish relationship then use your blog to deliver and respond to certain needs. 😉

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