Blogs have been around more than a decade now, but corporate blogging, or the use of blogs within firms, is still limited. From my teaching of business executives and professionals, I believe that this is probably due to a general lack of understanding of blogs and how they can improve social relationships and task performance.

In this post, I focus on the following.

• Common reaction of business executives and professionals to blogs as personal diaries;
• Social and task benefits of blogging; and
• How to increase blogging at work.

Common reaction to blogs as personal diaries

I present blogs to my audience (of business executives and professionals) as a web diary. I make them do a small exercise in which I direct them to look at selected blogs to help them gain a better understanding of blogs. They see that in a work context, a blogger typically  shares her/his thoughts, activities s/he is engaged in, interesting things s/he has experienced or come across, goals for the day or week and how well they were achieved, specific work-related problems for which s/he is seeking solutions, and the like. My audience also sees that blog readers interact with the blogger via commenting.

After this exercise, I commonly hear “If my team and I do this, when will we do our work? This is going to be a complete waste of our time. My company will never allow this.” I then probe my audience and ask them about the state of communication within their organization. It is rare to find individuals who are happy with the level and nature of communication in their organizations. For instance, communication from the top may be rare and largely one-way. That from their peers and subordinates may be largely via email and focused almost entirely on the task at hand. Very rarely do I find someone from my audience telling me that the communication in their organization is open and personal.

Social and task benefits of blogging

What my audience typically misses after the initial exercise is that blogs facilitate an opening up of people and their communication. In their research (pdf) on corporate blogging at a large corporation, Anne Jackson, JoAnne Yates, and Wanda Orlikowski found that being able to communicate (freely, widely, informally, without bureaucracy, quickly, easily) was one of the most cited benefits of blogging. By facilitating open and personal communication, blogs can have both social and task benefits. As I argue below, spending time on blogging may actually turn out to be time well spent.

Open and personal communication improves social relationships and builds friendship. Research has shown that good social relationships and friendship in teams leads to greater task monitoring, cooperation, and commitment, all of which improve task performance. Based on findings from more than 5 million interviews, the Gallup organization has found that people with best friends at work are also more satisfied and productive. In R&D organizations, project success has been found to be strongly linked to open communication within and across project teams (see Sloan Management Review article; pdf).

In virtual teams, too, frequent and open communication is vital for improving relationships and team performance. Blogs can help facilitate frequent and open communication. A friend of mine who took up blogging to stay connected with her teammates during her travels shared the following story with me.

When traveling, I create blog posts to share my experience.  It creates a different type of conversation; rather than focusing on business download they tend to be more all-encompassing.  One blog post may include an overview of how unions are viewed in China – and also a quick update on a killer deal I got shopping or my own clumsiness with local culture.  I am amazed how much it helps my team conversations.  My team used to think that my traveling was glamorous and often done at their sake.  Now, they understand the hard work that happens on the road.  They also feel very included in each lag of the trip.  The blogs allow easy communication across 12-hour different time zones.  I’ll post my daily reflections and go to sleep.  When I wake up, rather than grabbing a newspaper and wondering what is happening back in the US, I grab my computer and read what my group is up to.

The above story gives us an indication of how the sharing of experiences facilitated by blogs can improve understanding among co-workers and improve relationships. Leading Virtually readers may also recall the story of Ms. Stephanie Nielson, a blogger who built strong bonds with distant and anonymous readers by sharing her life experiences on her blog.

How to increase blogging at work

So what can business and virtual team leaders do to increase the adoption and use of blogs in their work settings?

1. Form a small team of co-workers to take up blogging with. Ideally, the co-workers you invite to blog should be those who love experimenting with new technology.
2. Your team should make a conscious attempt to blog frequently – say, once every day. The blogs posts don’t have to be long. But they should be authentic and personal. Sharing experiences, thoughts, plans, and reactions to recent happenings make ideal candidates for blog posts. Project and status updates normally provided via email may also be good candidates for blog posts.
3. Track indicators of engagement among individuals touched by the blogs. 360-degree feedback of those who have taken up blogging may also be tracked. These measures can be used to assess the impact of blogging.
4. Use the measurements to fine tune the blogging effort and help your team of bloggers succeed.
5. Use the story of your success to spread the message of advantages of blogs. Success stories that are backed by numbers can be very persuasive.

Summary

I have often been challenged about the utility of blogging in a corporate setting. In my view, there are numerous benefits that businesses can achieve through communication that is facilitated by blogs. With increasing competition and pressure to do more with less, corporations should seriously look at blogs as a tool that can increase organizational performance.