In previous columns, we talked about how knowledge management can greatly improve your company’s productivity and profits. In this article, we show you how to foster knowledge management using a free and familiar tool: blogs.

Blogs are online diaries. They are excellent tools for capturing undocumented knowledge that can be broadcast as often as they are updated. An employee may keep a blog to track daily accomplishments. A manager might use it for recording ideas and reminders which he may publish to employees. An engineer can use it to keep a log of changes to a system, which is very important in quality control.

Blogs are powerful because they enable people to record knowledge that may otherwise be lost, and then pass this on to others who may need it. For instance, if an employee were suddenly unable to report for work, resigns or retires, he leaves his acquired knowledge behind, and is made available through the blog.

Blogs can also give your small company a marketing boost. Some studies on blogging have shown that new products suddenly gained a market just because a blogger posted a product review, which got linked to another blog and then to another until it snowballed and resulted in sales.

But you have to be careful with creating hype through this method. Bloggers have evolved into tight-knit communities and posting a shameless, self-serving plug may only cause a backlash if your product turned out to be a dud.

Blogs – a contraction of the phrase, “Web log,” a clever software that essentially allowed non-technical users to set up and maintain a website using templates and forms – first sprouted in the mid-1990s. Blogs were initially limited to the diaries of the bloggers’ lives and opinions.

Since even non-geeks can write blogs, updating them could be done on a daily, even minute-by-minute basis. Since there was no one to police the content in blogs, unverified news and gossip soon found their way in these online journals, something which traditional, self-respecting news organizations could not dare publish in their own websites. This led pundits to predict that blogs would eclipse traditional news. We feel that this time is fast approaching.

Today, news organizations like CNN and our own Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism are using blogs (see http://www.pcij.org/blog/). The PCIJ blog demonstrates the impact of blogging for Pinoys. Its blog section is very popular and one of its postings even received a court restraining order, which is silly, because even if the court ordered the removal of the “offending” article, others can just post it on their own blogs!

Blogs, which can be built for free unlike a website, are ideal for entrepreneurs and small businesses with tight budgets. You may try free blog sites like Blogger (www.blogger.com) or Yahoo 360 (360.yahoo.com).

One disadvantage to having a free blog site is not having your own domain name. Your web link will look something like http://mycompany.blogspot.com, which may not sound very professional. Also, the blog you will be setting up on free blogging sites will be publicly viewable, so do not post sensitive company materials on them. For a more secure blog, set it up in your company intranet, or if you have none yet, you can start by installing a blog!

There are many blog engines you can download and install from the Web, and all you have to do is do a Google search for them. Running a blog in your intranet means that only your company will be able to use and read the blog. Then, instead of distributing a printed newsletter, you can use the blog to post announcements and updates.

Aside from using blogs to record knowledge and do guerilla marketing, blogs may also be a boost to company morale. If you keep a public blog and make occasional updates on the company’s achievements, your employees share in the pride and joy. Google – one of the hottest companies today – does this to brag about what it does (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/).

Like Google, some companies keep one external blog that can be seen on the Worldwide Web, with one employee posting regularly. Employees who performed well during the week or month may be given the privilege to post a blog.

There are caveats to blogging, however. A culture of openness, employee empowerment and trust must be fostered for blogging to become an accepted practice in an organization. In short, blogs are suitable for flat organizations (companies with minimal hierarchies). Companies have been known to take to task and eventually fire some employee-bloggers who published unapproved opinions. Disgruntled employees may use blogs to publish complaints. If you are not ready to accept this kind of a culture, then think long and hard before deciding to keep a blog.

With all these warnings, how should you use blogs? We recommend setting up a blog to record thoughts and ideas that pertain to the company. As a start, you may identify a few persons who will keep their own blogs – probably a supervisor and a couple of staff. Then, evaluate the blog’s usefulness. If it gains popularity and momentum, then let others maintain their own blogs.

Again, as entrepreneur and boss, you should be clear about your goal for the blogs. Also, be ready to get occasional complaints written on the blog, because no matter what, your staff will need a release from the stresses of work and the blog is a good way to let off steam. If you see this happening, talk to the staff member about the problem he aired in the blog. Some managers would agree that this is much better than not giving employees an outlet to vent their frustrations.

And let’s not forget one of the main strengths of blogs – capturing important ideas and knowledge that may benefit your organization. Try to review the blogs regularly. Or if you are too busy to oversee the blogs, assign someone to be the head blogger or editor. This person can be responsible for reviewing the blogs and bringing to your attention important entries – not just troublesome accounts, but fresh ideas, suggestions, useful tips, and other blog entries that may be of huge benefit to the company.

Finally, you can only understand blogging if you try it yourself. So go ahead and start firing away a blog or two. And then, set a strategy for harnessing the power of blogs for your business. Happy blogging!