Thursday, January 20, 2005
Corporate Library Blogs Article
In the November/December 2004 issue of the b/ITe newsletter, Stephen Cohen writes an article about corporate library blogs. Brought to my attention by his Library Stuff weblog, excellent as usual.
This article nicely addresses the types of basic questions you need to answer prior to embarking on a project to create a corporate weblog. You need to have information that must be communicated, you need to understand who will use the blog (internal employees or the general public as well) and how the blog will be used. A mission statement helps to establish the goals of the blog and focus content meaningfully.
I like this article because it puts first things first: get straight what you want to convey, to who, and for what purpose. A corollary objective to be achieved in finding the answers to these questions is: get buy-in from users and your IT support staff. People issues dominate the decision to begin such a project, not technological issues.
The article also points out that one of the primary advantages of blogs over e-mail communication of this information is that the blog groups user comments with the original post for an easily-followed "stream of conversation". Trying to tie all follow-up e-mail replies to an original e-mail can drive you batty! This grouping of like-subject comments also facilitates collaborative efforts among staff members sharing similar interests or expertise.
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This article nicely addresses the types of basic questions you need to answer prior to embarking on a project to create a corporate weblog. You need to have information that must be communicated, you need to understand who will use the blog (internal employees or the general public as well) and how the blog will be used. A mission statement helps to establish the goals of the blog and focus content meaningfully.
I like this article because it puts first things first: get straight what you want to convey, to who, and for what purpose. A corollary objective to be achieved in finding the answers to these questions is: get buy-in from users and your IT support staff. People issues dominate the decision to begin such a project, not technological issues.
The article also points out that one of the primary advantages of blogs over e-mail communication of this information is that the blog groups user comments with the original post for an easily-followed "stream of conversation". Trying to tie all follow-up e-mail replies to an original e-mail can drive you batty! This grouping of like-subject comments also facilitates collaborative efforts among staff members sharing similar interests or expertise.
# posted by Scott A. Curtis : 9:05 AM
