In her assessment of JotSpot's decision to create a company blog, Evelyn Rodriguez says:
a lot of the team members have their own personal blogs - which as far as I'm concerned does just as much good if not more good than the officially sanctioned company ones
Whilst I appreciate that Evelyn has been in this game longer than my paltry 21 posts, I'm really not sure I agree.
In a previous post, I outlined the benefits I think blogging communities offer over and above a collection of individual blogs:
-
They are easily aggregated into a single point of entry, quickly demonstrating the breadth of depth of collective knowledge within an organisation
- They can be "controlled" by an organisation - you can ensure your community reflects your own policies, not those of an independent blog provider
- The software is cheap and simple to implement, whatever flavour of technology you prefer
- Readers can subscribe to your aggregated RSS feed, as well as each individuals'
- The success of individual blogs will reflect well on the wider community - and your brand
- By consolidating category taxonomy, you can create sub-communities of interest
- All blogs within your community can be branded to reflect your organisation
I would be interested in hearing what counter benefits might outweigh these for any business.