Wikis, blogs and forums are more popular than ever before. Each of these features (or components) can be included on corporate web sites, intranets or extranets. While these components have been available for the past few years, they have now reached a tipping point, meaning:

1) Web site owners know how to use these features.

2) Web site visitors are familiar and comfortable with them.

3) The cost of adding these features to your site is very low due to the plethora of available turnkey and snap-in solutions.

Benefits of Using Blogs, Forums and Wikis:

• Better collaboration
• Communication has a bigger psychological impact when the receiving party is given a chance to respond
• Reduces email clutter
• Increases site stickiness (and gives people a reason to come back)
• Introduces living content – content that grows on its own, creating unique intellectual property for your organization. (Be sure you make your T&C’s explicitly clear!).
• For public web pages, these features create dynamic content which improve search engine rankings

Blogs

Blogs (or Weblogs) typically have a single author who makes sporadic, journal entries that are organized by time sequence. Readers can then post comments in response to the blog entries which are also organized in a linear, chronologic fashion. The term “blog” has been in use since 1999.

The blog is becoming a very popular feature for intranets in mid- to large-sized corporations. Even the military uses blogs for internal communication! The idea is that corporate communications will be more easily disseminated and later referenced if it is on a blog, rather than in a series of email memos. Furthermore, the blog offers the reader a formalized mechanism for responding and commenting in an orderly manner.

The CEO might have her own blog, the VP of HR might have his own blog, the VP of Customer Service might have a blog.  These blogs become prominent links on a company’s home page, and having your own blog on the corporate intranet is becoming a status symbol. Not only was Michelle promoted to EVP, but she has her own blog!

The amount of features you want, especially with regard to work flow rules, integration with existing access control mechanisms, and the ability to precisely track what individuals say affect the cost of a blog.

Most large companies do not allow their employees to post anonymous comments on the corporate blog.

Popular blog features include “track back” showing a list of other blog entries that refer to a post on the first blog. The ability for a blog to offer “permalinks” as well as the ability of a blog to offer outgoing RSS or Atom XML feeds is also in high demand.

If you are looking for a free blog hosted by somebody else, we have enjoyed using Google’s Blogger. You can easily add Google Adwords to Blogger to create a revenue stream.

Das Blog is currently our favorite blog component for the Microsoft .NET platform. A list of leading open source blog components can be found at OpenSourceCMS. 

Internet Forums (aka message boards)

Forums are a great way to have a group discussion. Forums are also very popular as a tool for companies providing technical support. They make a great feature for extranets and intranets where committees need to discuss issues. Take the following example.

Current state:

A committee forms. Members of the committee gather, discuss ideas, assign action items and set a date for the next committee meeting. If the committee is operating well, between meetings a member may receive a dozen emails as part of various “reply to all” threads. The committee meets on subsequent occasions; however, certain committee members will miss certain meetings, and it is difficult to coordinate meeting times. It is difficult to keep these people up to speed. Interested parties who are not on the committee have trouble tracking the committee’s activity. If a new person joins the organization or the committee, the newbie will be largely clueless as to the committee’s activities, and thus, unable to participate or otherwise assist.

Desired state:

After a committee forms, the committee posts its membership roster on the password-protected extranet. The committee posts its meeting schedule on the members-only calendar. Members of the committee create online message boards to discuss various issues, and other qualified parties (authorized non-committee members) can monitor the dialogue and chime in as appropriate. The extranet will reduce the volume of emails needed for effective communication. The message boards will also serve as an historical archive – assisting new members and future committees. One of the message boards can also serve as a de facto blog.

Example forums: