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While blogs have been quite the rage on the Internet, do they have a place within your organization's Intranet? If used purposefully, an internal blog can be a fresh and beneficial addition to your collaboration and knowledge management toolset.

In order for any of this to make sense, let's define what a blog is and how it differs from other communication and collaboration tools. Webopedia defines it as: "Short for Web log, a blog is a Web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual." Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author. The beauty of a blog is that the person who is the author, that is, doing the blogging, does not need to have any technical Web content authoring skills.

There are several characteristics of blogs that make them unique and set them apart from their other collaboration and communication counterparts. By their very nature, blogs reflect the personality and voice of the person doing the blogging. Blogs are informal, direct, and natural. You can't remove the person from the blog as they are synonymous so, departments don't author blogs, people do; therefore, blogs are not the place for formal corporate communications.

Another distinct feature of blogs is the frequency with which content is updated. They tend to be frequent and fairly immediate. When you read them, you get the feel that the author is writing with a stream of consciousness about something that is currently happening. In order for your blog to work, expect to publish fresh content several times a week at a minimum or it'll never become a voice worth hearing.

Bloggers thrive on putting links in their content and having other blogs link to them. It is like a great big informal link exchange or Web ring but within the context of a conversation and without all the bad graphics.

Another unique feature stems from the Blog technology itself. Blogs are typically published both on Web sites as well as in feeds such as RSS. (Rich Site Summary is a way to syndicate web content using XML.)

At first glance, you might be thinking the question of whether to blog within your enterprise feels like déjà vu of the early intranet decisions of whether to allow discussion boards or not. Many of the concerns are similar. For example, who will be allowed to use this means of free expression? How will you "manage" personalities? And how do you secure or screen the information and views that get published? Here's where you get to decide what you really want to accomplish by having a blog. Goodness knows no organization needs to implement another technology simply because it seems like the hip thing to do or to keep up with the Jones'.

So do you really need a blog? And, if so, what is the purpose of your blog? To me, the biggest reason to blog internally is to capitalize on the opportunity to encourage communications and knowledge flow upwards in the organization. Existing communication channels within companies tend to come from on high, be nicely polished, highly wordsmithed by many including the lawyers, and distributed to the masses. With a blog, the power of communication is given to individuals at much lower ranks within the organization.

So, you need to ask yourself if your company culture has sufficient openness and honesty for a blog to succeed. Are you prepared to relinquish control around what the blog "should" look like? Are there any potential business risks and are you willing and prepared to handle them? If these questions or the thought of employees publishing content in their own, unique and gifted voices troubles you, a blog is not for you.

That being said, a blog is not a free-for-all. If you decide to blog, you'll need to consider the following:

Understand the Technology
Do some research and really get to understand what a blog is, how it works, who is using it, and for what purpose. Get comfortable with this model of publishing by reading about the distinctive features of blogs and reading various blogs yourself. Learn what is out there and where you might fit in to the equation.

Have a Clear Purpose
What do you want to achieve by having a blog? Be specific on the purpose of the blog and be certain the goals you're trying to achieve and the blogging technology are a good fit. Remember that blogs may fulfill needs within your organization that you haven't even considered and which are foreign to you. Some interesting ideas could include a salesforce blog to share techniques and customer/competitor knowledge between salespeople or an implementation status blog for a major technology project.

Coordinate with Existing Offerings
Now is not the time to create a silo within your company. Coordinate your efforts with existing communication channels and technologies. Avoid duplication of efforts and garner champions who will promote the blog within existing communications. Find and cultivate a synergy between and among your communication channels.

Create Guidelines and Policies
This is where you get to define some parameters around what will happen with and what is acceptable for your blog. Determine who will manage what and what degree of autonomy or moderation you desire from your blog. The key here is to create structure around your effort without trying to overly police the project or you will lose the very benefits inherent to the blogging model. A wonderful resource on blogging can be found at Corporateblogging.info in their Beginners Guide to Corporate Blogging.

Choose the Tools
You need to determine some of the basics. Will you host your own blogging software or utilize one of the existing blogging services on the Internet? Do you want to offer RSS versions? Do you want to offer trackback services? You can learn more about the tools out there from the following sites:

• MoveableType
• Blogger
• UserLand
• six apart
• Traction Software
• Socialtext
• RSS 2.0 Information