Today’s virtual and globalized working environment finds company CEOs looking at employee engagement as a key challenge. Reaching out to its people in a distributed working environment is done through the global phenomenon – the internet.

The World Wide Web brings closer the physical distances and bridges these distances between people in the communities and the society as a whole. While this method of communication is not yet all pervasive, it is certain to become the basic standard for communication in the future.

Blogs, an abbreviation for “weblogs” are microsites on the web that stand by themselves or are part of traditional websites. A corporate blog is either published by or with the support of an organization in order to reach the organizational goals. External blogs help strengthen relationships with target groups and position the organization as industry experts. Internal blogs on the other hand are used as tools for knowledge management and collaboration.

From politicians to novelists, business pros and aspiring businessmen, everyone seems to be starting a blog. Many large corporations already use blogs to communicate internally to their employees on a regular basis. This helps the organizational heads to cut across hierarchies and deliver their views without the concern of misinterpretation. Blogs are also considered to be a less formal way of communicating with the existing customers, prospective customers and investors. While many of the blogs are authored by individuals, group blogs are also becoming popular in a company setting.

Although, currently, blogs are used by a small number of consumers online, they have garnered a great deal of corporate attention and it is believed that they will grow in importance. At a minimum, companies can monitor blogs to learn what is being said about their services and products.

Collaboration

There is no denying the fact that the success of a business is due to the people that work in the company. These are the people that are trusted with the customers every day, trusted to talk to the media, trusted to talk in meetings, and now they can certainly be trusted to talk on the internet on behalf of the company. Blogs can be used as a workspace where project members keep others updated without having to waste time searching the inbox or writing reports. They work as a tool for collaboration, discussion and research.

Communication

Even individuals who otherwise have no means of participating in a discussion can participate in blogs. The biggest gain can be from internal blogs that open up communication channels between the management and employees, where CEOs can share their thoughts with employees openly and honestly. Improved communication, better team working, improved employee benefits have been reported by many organizations who use internal blogs regularly to communicate directly with their staff. They believe blogs helped them resolve a lot of HR issues, which otherwise may not have been brought to the notice of the management.

Investors

Investors are people who have invested their money in an organization and are keen to know the developments. Blogging can communicate everything indirectly to these people, including details of changes in policies, procedures, customer feedback etc. This gives a sense of security to the investors who will appreciate not being left in the dark about the internal happenings of the company.

Bringing People Closer

If the business of an organization is spread across different continents, countries, cities or even locations locally and there is need for people at different places to work together, blogging is the best way of creating links allowing people to communicate in the most efficient way. Blogging improves the spirit of teamwork, exchange of ideas and facilitates tutoring among other things.

Cultural

These blogs are used to strengthen organizational culture. They mostly contain non-work related posts and informal content which is social in nature. The management itself takes care of these blogs or designates bloggers, and some companies even let all the employees post on these blogs.

Safety Measures

There are potential risks of speaking to the world in public, for both the employer and the employee. There is a good chance of inappropriate posts being made by an employee and this could lead to several issues, even legal. This is the reason, organizations should have a blogging policy in place and it is also important to educate their employees on appropriate blogging and communication online, to be able to benefit from blogging.

Blogs are the most targeted tools used by organizations to form communities and bring about a change, create new businesses, improve existing businesses, improve human relations and discover new things. Corporate communication has evolved into a much needed benefit and whether to blog or not is not a question anymore. The question is how to use the corporate blog effectively to deliver thoughts and impart knowledge. Organizations today believe that sharing with the help of technology gives birth to innovation.