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We all know what's mightier than the sword, but if Spiderman has taught us anything it's that with great power comes great responsibility.

Blogs have become one of the most popular forms of personal expression to emerge on the Internet in years. They have the ability to turn regular users into writers by providing them with an easy-to-use medium in which to express their opinions. Blogs are easy to create and they're easy to broadcast. They can be part of a Web site and syndicated and delivered to readers as an RSS feed.

But there are so many trivial "hobby blogs" on the Internet that were created on a whim. For instance, when a lack of judgment leads you to believe there are more people out there who share your affinity for cheese sculpturing than there really are. Because of this, it has lead some to perceive blogs as a frivolous tool.

As blogs matured, however, organizations of all sizes saw the advantages in using them for marketing and branding purposes. But do they have any practical internal application on corporate intranets? The answer is yes -- but they have to be used properly and responsibly.

What's Your Motivation?

The bandwagon is a crowded place. Whenever a new technological trend gains widespread usage and support on the Internet, corporate intranet owners or IT seem to find an excuse to implement the same technology internally regardless of whether it's needed or not. Perhaps it's the little kid in all of us that causes our enthusiasm for novelties to overshadow common sense and necessity.

Whether or not organizations can benefit from integrating internal blogs with an intranet boils down to motivation: Why are you doing it and what's it for? Internal corporate blogs are an excellent way to communicate with an organization's employees but intranet owners must have a clearly defined goal before adopting the tool and including it as part of the officially sanctioned intranet. Will it be used to support official business processes, communicate important organization news to employees, provide lighthearted and casual water cooler content, or a combination of all three?

A blog shouldn't be implemented simply for the sake of having one or because everyone on the Internet seems to have one. Finding a reason to have a tool after it's been implemented is sure to lead to misuse and failure.

Uses for Corporate Blogs

There's been an ongoing debate about the true productivity of such user-generated content on intranets, and whether they should really be sharing the same space as engineered content. Unlike the relatively formal tone of engineered content, blogs reflect the personality of the author and are usually more conversational -- and that's one of its main appeals.

A blog, like e-mail, is simply another form of communication but with one very noticeable difference: E-mail is targeted to a recipient or a group of recipients; blogs are meant to be published for all to read. They lack the wink-wink, nudge-nudge subtleties afforded to recipients of private e-mail messages. Blogs are very public, and bloggers need to realize this.

A blog can be a great way for:

• an organization's president or CEO to communicate with, or make announcements to, the entire organization (instead of using mass e-mails that might already be cluttered with spam);

• project leaders or teams to update corporate employees about the status and progress of high-profile projects and contracts;

• department or business unit heads to keep employees apprised of the goings-on in their department or group;

• all employees to encourage dialog (via a blog's comment or feedback feature) amongst the user community about various topics of interest;

• employees to strengthen the culture of the organization.

Examples of Internal Blog Applications
Purpose	Blogger	Tone
Corporate level communication	CEO, CIO, CFO, President	Formal
Project or contract level communication	Group/project leaders, department heads	Formal
Industry news and discussion	Individual employees	Formal or casual
Water cooler content	Individual employees	Informal and casual

Examples of internal blog applications.

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