Blogging With An Intranet Platform

Written by: Rashmi

Blogging comes with an array of benefits. Apparently, most businesses already know it and hence almost every other business website today has a separate blog section. But that blog is for outside readers – potential customers and clients.

What if your company’s employees too need to hear your voice? What if you need an ‘internal’ blog? As it turns out, there is a solution for that and it is called blogging with an intranet platform.

Intranet Blogging: What Is It?

Let’s start with the basic definition of the intranet. An intranet is a network of computers in an organization which is used to share information and other types of data. While the internet connects computers worldwide, the intranet connects computers within an organization.

Now, the usual blogs that one sees are the internet blogs that are shared worldwide. But modern companies are now realizing they also need internal ‘employees-only’ blogs. For this, these companies are using intranet platforms.

Here is a list of some unique features of intranet blogs:

• Any computer that is outside of your company’s intranet network can not access the blogs.

• The admins will have full control over the accessibility of blog posts and comments.

• If needed, anonymous content can also be published.

In a sense, an intranet blog is like a regular blog but with more control to the admins. The features of the blog can be tailor-made according to the need of the company. For example, there can be department-specific blogs (one blog for the marketing department and another for the HR department) or pan-organization blogs.

Benefits Of Blogging With An Intranet Platform

At its face value, blogging with an intranet platform sounds like a very simple idea. But contrary to its simple optics, it delivers the following benefits:

It Builds Bond Between Employees

Work from home and the whole pandemic situation has taught us how important it is to have a good bond with your colleagues. When colleagues have empathy towards each other, businesses tend to move swiftly through thick and thin.

When people read blog posts by their colleagues, they see the free thoughts instead of lifeless data-driven models. In fact, the comment box of a blog post can become the new place of water-cooler conversations.

It Increases Productivity Of Teams

In many studies, it is proven again and again that intranet blogs create a significant impact on the productivity of teams. A regular employee spends somewhere between 60 to 100 minutes everyday in searching for one or the other type of information. If the information is available on the blog, employees will not have to spend looking it upon on the internet or the unending email threads.

The best part about using blogs as a knowledge-management platform is that employees tend not to get distracted by blogs which they otherwise do in the case of emails or slack channels.

It Creates An Open Company Culture

There is a reason why the world’s biggest businesses like IBM and Microsoft have opted for Intranet blogging – it creates an open company culture. While other platforms for sharing information like emails are used just to talk about work, a blog can be used to share any type of information. Once can share insights from working on a project, personal story on work-life balance, and so on.

It is true that building an open company culture takes time and its benefits are intangible. But the very fact that the world’s most profitable companies are investing in their workplace cultures tells us something about its impressive ROI.

It Encourages Speaking Up

Hierarchy in the workplace is seen to be a major reason why employees hesitate to speak up their minds at the workplace. Again, blogging with an intranet platform is found to be helpful here. Companies have found that they can encourage employees to speak up without disrupting hierarchies just by using intranet blogging.

New hires or people who generally have a lower voice in the workplace are seen to speak up on blogs. A blog also gives a message to the employees that the company wants to hear the voice of each individual.

Conclusion

From small businesses to large corporations, intranet blogs offer benefits to businesses of every size and type. Just ensure that you get the right tools to start with the intranet for your business.