What is knowledge management? It is the control and dissemination of information relevant to an entity with regard to the people within the entity. So if you are running a business – no matter how big or small – knowledge management is making sure that the right people have the right information at the right time.

How important is this? Imagine a scenario wherein your customer service representatives have different information from the current SOP of the company. What is going to happen if a customer asks them for help? It is bound to be a disaster.

There are different ways by which a business entity can manage knowledge and information within the ranks. One easy and cost effective way is through blogging. Now I am talking about internal company blogs as opposed to the business blogs that we normally talk about, which are open to the public.

Take for example, a situation wherein a new query from a customer arises. No one has handled such a query before. The representative who takes care of the situation can resolve it and document the process in the blog, making it easily retrievable by other employees who may need the information in the future.

More so, internal blog posts can serve as an interactive tool for employees. They can exchange thoughts and ideas regarding various issues and concerns. It opens up a venue for problem solving wherein limitless ideas can be exchanged.

Of course, you would have to instill some sort of control regarding posts as things might get out of hand. Still, this is easily implemented and the advantages far outweigh the potential risk.

Image from: MITRE

Who isn’t interested in knowing something about the future? That is why we have fortune tellers and all sorts of schemes to give us a peek into what tomorrow holds for us. Why not let this tiny aspect of human nature do your work for you and your business?

Give your customers a peek into what you have in store for them in the near future by posting entries in your blog.

Remember when Sony was still working on the PlayStation 3 and all they had were little snippets of information? How about Steve Jobs and Apple with the iPhone? These two giants in the tech industry know how to build up the anticipation for their products. They know how to give just enough information to their customers and heighten their excitement for what is to come.

You can do exactly the same thing with your business blog.

Make a big deal about a product or service that you are about to release in the near future. Give your customers an idea of what it is about but keep some details hidden – for now. You can even throw in a teaser or two to keep them guessing. Of course, you have to be accurate and honest – you don’t want to be accused of false advertising.

You may not have as big a customer base as Sony and Apple but it doesn’t matter. With such a strategy employed, your blog readers will certainly get the word around. It will only be a matter of time till you get more of the exposure that you are aiming for.

Small businesses can learn a lot from the big players in the business world. If you need more proof of how a business blog can help your own enterprise, read on to find out how Cisco Systems did it – and is doing it – blog-wise.

Let’s go back to when it all started, in 2006, when Cisco was caught in the middle of a PR disaster. They were being accused of messing around with their routers in order to pacify the Chinese government. Instead of using the traditional means of getting out information, they turned to the blogosphere to get their side of the story out. It all started there and now, Cisco’s blog network has expanded to way beyond the original plan.

So what can we learn from Cisco’s experience?

Think long term.
In life, short cuts do not always work. Success in blogging takes time. You cannot expect changes to occur overnight. Neither can you expect the results you are looking for in a short amount of time. You have to be prepared to spend time and effort on building up your blog.

Get your people involved.
Do not severely limit your people from participating in your blog. In Cisco, most anyone can blog. They merely have to apply to write for the blog. There is a blog team which then looks through the applications. Having more than one person blogging provides more input and also prevents a single employee from burning out. Cisco bloggers also need to follow a policy set by the company regarding blogging.

Make the blog part of company communication.
Remember Cisco suing Apple? They discussed the issue strongly and actively in their blogs. By doing so, they were able to get their side of the story out in the mainstream. In fact, using the key phrase “Cisco sues Apple,” their blog came out as the second search result in Google during that time.

Image from: Tech Shout

Listening is one skill that is of very high importance – no matter what context you may be in. Think about your latest meeting – how did you glean vital facts about your competitor? How were you able to deduce that critical insight? Probably by listening very acutely to what was going on.

Now translate this skill – listening – to cyberspace, more specifically to business blogs. We have been talking on and on about how business blogs can help you – there is no doubt about it. If your business has its blog, there are a thousand and one benefits that you can reap – merely from having your own blog.

Yet do not let the fact that your business has a blog limit you. It does not mean that you have done all you can to improve the business! Think beyond the box, so to speak. Look beyond your own business blog and visit other blogs.

Why? Because by doing that, you are listening. And listening gives you more information – information that can be very useful tools in your path to success.

Listening is actually being done in your own blog – by reading readers’ comments, you have hearing out their concerns. That is one way to gather information that you can use. Yet beyond that, try visiting other sites and blogs and see what your “non-customers” and competitors are thinking and doing. This kind of information just might give you the edge that you need to get ahead of the rest of the pack.

Bad press is a fact of life. In spite of the fact that you are a well established company worldwide (or come to think of it maybe because of this fact), you can still get bad publicity. Of course, being a small company does not make you exempt from this possibility as well.

More often than not, there are two ways of dealing with this problem. One is to sit it out and ignore the allegations. If this is not possible, then companies have to give their own side of the story. This would entail PR firms and a lot of expense.

Yet there is another solution – blogging.

Let’s imagine a scenario wherein an “independent” entity conducts a study one some of your products or services and they find something to criticize. Normally this should not be that big of a concern – we should be open to criticism. But let’s say that the results of the study are totally unfair, somewhat untrue, and gives a deceptive picture of your company and your products or services.

If you have a business blog up and running, it would be an easy matter to post an entry refuting the allegations against you. More so, you could easily refer to previous posts that could bolster your case. Even more importantly, your readers – who we assume are your customers as well – would be part of the whole thing. They probably follow your blog already and know the real deal. They would probably even throw in their 2 cents worth.

Get the picture I am painting here?

These two characteristics are perhaps some of the two most important advantages that a blog can bring to your business.

Ask yourself, why have you jumped into the blogging bandwagon and set up a blog for your own business? Why didn’t you just stick it out with the more traditional means of marketing and advertising your business? I am sure there is a plethora of reasons behind this move but I am also certain that one consideration is speed of getting your message across to as many people as possible, am I right?

Now think about your blog. How many people can access it at the same time? Theoretically, limitless. How fast can these people receive any new information that you have posted on the blog? You might think that if the check the blog daily then they can gain access to new information as soon as the blog is updated. Right. Yet there is an even better way of distributing your information – through RSS and pings.

That’s right, with this technology, everyone who is subscribed to your blog will receive the posts each time you put out an update. Recipients of the posts include directories and search engines which you are subscribed to. It is as simple as that – write, post, and distribute. No waiting time, no nothing.

Along these lines, updating your blog is just as easy. As long as you have the necessary information, you merely have to write an entry and then post it. Not considering the writing time, updating can take you less than a minute. Compare that to the traditional press releases and printed newsletters.

There is no doubt about it, small businesses everywhere are realizing everyday that making their presence felt online is integral to the success of their activities. More and more, you will find small businesses creating web sites of their own just so they can have a form of contact online. This is good news, to say the least. However, the sad part is that many of these small businesses also tend to think that the mere fact that they have established a web site is enough. Many times, the web site is left alone and neglected. Updates are far and few in between. In short, they have done the bare minimum to establish online presence.

What is the bare minimum? To merely have a web site – or even a web page – that lets people know that this business exists. Yet is this enough? Most definitely not! A web site can taken advantage of and used to its fullest potential to make a strong impact online. More so, you can go one step further and set up a business blog. Now this, with its fresh content on a regular basis is more than the bare minimum.

A blog can be designed separately from the web site itself. It has to be visible, pleasing to the eyes, and easy to read. With this set up – both web site and blog working hand in hand, you are bound to establish connections with a wide variety of people and make a name for yourself online.

A picture paints a thousand words – or so the saying goes. Call it cliché but I believe that this saying holds a large amount of truth. Now imagine your business blog. Why does it exist in the first place? There could be many answers to this question, I know, yet one of the main reasons businesses set up a blog of their own is to catch the attention of their customers. They want to gain new customers and retain old ones. I am sure that you don’t think differently.

So back to using pictures for your business blog…Let’s say that you offer a certain service. Whatever this service is, there might be aspects that you just cannot explain in words. Though words can be powerful, sometimes they are just not enough. What can you do? This is where pictures come in.

If you put photos in your blog detailing the service that you offer, you can present a visual image to your clients. They can see for themselves just exactly what you are offering to them. Sometimes, people need visuals in order to fully understand the message that you want to get across. Take for example a spa service detailing all that they have to offer. Contrast that with a post which has text and this picture:

Do you see what I mean?

Just a note on using pictures for blogging, though. Be careful to represent your product or service as realistically as possible. Sometimes, pictures can be larger than life. If this happens with your blog, then you might be in for customer dissatisfaction.

One of the core activities of any business is to gather information regarding their customers. In order to provide services or products which cater to their target market’s needs and preferences, a business has to have an accurate gauge of the market’s pulse, so to speak. As such, market research is one of the most important endeavors of any business.

Any businessman would know that in order to obtain results which are as accurate as can be, market research has to be conducted with as wide a coverage as possible. In order to achieve such a coverage, money has to be expended – a considerable amount. Yet there is another way to conduct market research without having to expend too many resources – both in terms of time, money, and personnel.

A business blog can do just that. Take the example of Stone Creek Coffee, a coffee store chain in the U.S. When they to make their presence felt online, they chose the blog to do the job. Tom Pionek, technology and marketing director, shares that their blog present more opportunities to interact with customers as compared to press releases and similar forms of business communications. Their blog also went on to serve as way of getting feedback from the customers – a form of market research.

According to consultant Dana Vanden Heuvel, blogs are “one of the largest free, for what that’s worth, market research test-beds. It goes beyond the focus groups and some of the other market-research vehicles that people have used in the past or companies have used in the past.”

With more and more people turning to the Internet for information, a business blog could give you the edge that you need.

The other day I was talking to an Italian guy who works for one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. He works in the I.T. department and pretty soon he was telling me all about his latest pet project. I couldn’t help but notice how proud and excited he was of this endeavor – he just completed setting up a blog for the company. Naturally, that caught my interest and prodded him for more information.

One of the main things that stuck to my mind is the idea that a blog can humanize a corporation. That I.T. guy was saying that for companies as big as theirs, the consumers don’t even have the barest clue of the people behind the scenes. For us customers, all we see are the products themselves and advertisements on TV or magazines perhaps. As such, the corporation is a mere abstract idea in the minds of people – there is rarely any person associated with it.

He continued on to say that with their new blog, they are putting on a new spin to customer relations. The way he set up the company blog was for different people from within the company to contribute to the blog. In this way, there is freedom of expression. Their target is to reach out to customers so that they can see that there are real people working behind the scenes to deliver the products that they use.

I couldn’t help but agree with this guy. His arguments made sense – show the customers real people behind the scenes and they will be able to relate to the company more.