Big Blue Knows How to Blog

IBM does a great job supporting employees who have personal blogs.  While other vendors might try to police what employees and/or partners say publicly (or just shut them down completely), IBM actively helps internal bloggers.

IBM started an internal blogging site called BlogCentral in 2003.  IBM realizes it is in the company's best interest for employees not only to learn personally but to contribute to others' learning. Knowledge stored in one person's head only is of limited corporate value; if you can get each person to formally document his or her know-how then many others might benefit.

Of course, IBM does not want a creative writing free-for-all.  The company has put together formal guidelines for those individuals with personal web blogs read by the public. Basic advice from Big Blue to their employee bloggers includes: be yourself, add value, don't pick fights, and don't forget your day job.

While investigating IBM's blogging practices, I also came across an interesting research paper on IBM's Blog Muse, a tools to help connect individuals looking for specific content with those who could provide it. See the document here.

See the IBM public blog site for more information.