Ann Handley has a great blog post entitled What’s the Biggest Lie About Blogging?

Ann talks about the learning process she has gone through as she created a successful blog. She asked some of her fellow bloggers what was the biggest lie about blogging. I liked Seth Godin’s response:

Oh for sure, it’s this: That people care what you say. They don’t. They care what they get.

I think this really useful advice for people creating a blog, and for companies looking to deploy internal Enterprise 2.0 style blogs.

The key hurdle to overcome with any enterprise application of Web 2.0 technology is adoption. Your people have to use it. To paraphrase Seth, they will only use it if they get something out of it.

You enterprise blogs and enterprise wikis have to be immediately useful. The tools have to make it easier to find information. The tools also have to give contributors direct and useful feedback. That means things like readership statistics, in addition to comments and cross links. They also need recognition for their hard work.

In an enterprise 2.0 world, bosses can and will order their employees to write posts and comments. However, the real value from enterprise blogs and wikis will be realized when users start adding to the system as part of their regular work flow, and because they want to; because they see some personal benefit from doing so.