Playing to their egos
It’s all about the fame. If you want people to contribute brilliant content to an internal enterprise blogging system, you have to make sure that there is something in it for them. They must have a personal reason for contributing.
One way to acheive this is to make sure that people obtain clear credit for ever contribution they make. In MoveableType, the default tempaltes put the byline for each posting at the bottom of the post, as you see in this post here. WordPress takes a different tact with its default template by placing the byline directly below the headline.
In a Web Office application, you should use the second approach. If you want to make it really powerful, set it up so that the name links to the author’s Profile Page, or People Page, or whatever you choose to call their personal enterprise blogging page.
Remember that most enterprise blogs are going to be about specific topics, such as a project or a product. In these general blogs, you need to take extra steps to make it clear who wrote the article.
Implementation in MovableType is fairly easy.
Here’s the code to implement this in MT:
<MTEntries lastn="7">
<$MTEntryTrackbackData$>
<MTDateHeader>
<h2 class=”date-header”>
<$MTEntryDate format=”%x”$>
</h2>
</MTDateHeader>
<a id=”a<$MTEntryID pad=”1″$>”></a>
<div class=”entry” id=”entry-<$MTEntryID$>”>
<h3 class=”fame-entry-header”>
<a href=”<$MTEntryPermalink$>”
rel=”bookmark”
title=”Permanent link to <$MTEntryTitle$>”>
<$MTEntryTitle$>
</a>
</h3>
<div class=”fame-author-name”>
Posted at <$MTEntryDate format=”%m:%S%p”$>
by: <a href=”<$MTEntryAuthorURL$>”>
<MTEntryAuthorDisplayName$></a>
</div>
…
Hey Rod, it’s me BK. I’ve been meaning to comment on a related point. I was speaking with someone who at their firm utilizes wiki’s to share information. The person I was talking with felt that most employees shared information but only enough to demonstrate a specific knowledge on the subject, not enough to benefit the group as a whole. The idea of sharing all information for the greater good ran counter to their belief in competition and capitalist values. Being that the individuals’ outlook on the company had soured their only means of “getting ahead” was to keep the information that they felt would give them a competitive advantage over their peers. When I discussed our chat regarding providing recognition to their posts/work they were intimately engaged/concerned about who would rate the value or importance of their posts and felt that it would not be judged in a vacuum. Alot more could be said of the above but I’ll have a better opportunity to post my opinion on the conversation in a day or so. Nice site Rod!
Rod, This is a great post. Giving people credit for their creative works is obviously important and I’m glad to see you’ve pointed it out.
A related area that I’ve given some thought to is that, once people do create something online, they need some assurance that what they create is actually stored, transmitted, and displayed correctly. Given that current technology makes the reformatting and modification of digital information so easy, employees (who are willing to go public with an idea) must be assured that their thoughts are accurately represented and not subject to modification. I address this to some extent here
http://www.ddmcd.com/intellectual_property_integrity.html
but I would like to see this topic addressed more.
Start blogging…. or you’re FIRED!
That’s the plan. We’ll order people to blog. We’ll threaten them with dismissal if they don’t. Start blogging…. or you’re FIRED! OK… perhaps another approach. Suw Charman has written a fantastic article entitled: “An adoption strategy for social so…