This post, the last in the series on using blogs for internal or associational communications, covers ways blogs can be used in actual practice.

Alerts
How does a large real estate brokerage or association notify members when there is an important announcement or time-sensitive update? Traditionally, an email broadcast would be sent. The problem with email is that, thanks to spam filters, there is no way to guarantee the message will be received by every recipient. While that means of communication is certainly still valid, blogs provide an adjunct method. The responsible party simply writes a blog post. Every member subscribed to that blog's RSS feed will receive the message.

Project Management
Project teams working in a group blog environment can easily maintain an ongoing record of decisions and actions. Project leaders can also use the blog to keep other company personnel current with respect to the status of any given project. According to IBM researcher Dan Gruen, "We've seen people using blogs to diary their daily experiences using a new technology or building a new kind of system, monitored by others as a sort of real-time virtual apprenticeship, which lets them observe events as they unfold and see the issues that arise and how they are addressed." (InfoWorld.com, March 28, 2005). This approach is far superior to the traditional approach characterized by mountains of records in file cabinets.

Departmental Notification
Department heads can use blogs to notify company employees of current activities and achievements. A marketing department can submit a post announcing the availability of a new marketing brochure. Since files can be uploaded, the new brochure can be available on the blog for everyone in the organization to read.

Company and Industry News
The blog can become a repository for company or association news, press releases, industry-related news, and current trends. Thanks to its ease of use, both management and employees can contribute.

Brainstorming
One of the best uses for intranet blogs is as a collaborative tool for brainstorming new ideas. There are a number of ways this can work. The project or team leader can write the initial post, and other members can respond via the comment component. A blog could even be set aside just for brainstorming purposes with each team member contributing as an author. As with all things blog, information can be categorized by topic, date and author.

Personal blogs
A personal blog can prove valuable to the organization in so many different ways. Consider a broker who reads a lot and attends several real estate conferences and conventions. She can update her blog with summaries of the articles she's read and notes he took at the conferences. All of the readers who find value in this information will read the blog and pass the information along.

CEO and key staff blogs
A blog is a wonderful way for the CEO and other senior management personnel to get closer to employees. Imagine a new CEO hosting a blog called "My First Hundred Days" in which he or she writes about daily experiences and lets employees comment in order to help him or her get acclimated. Other key people within the organization can blog about their specific area of responsibility, in an environment that encourages sharing and participation by all.

Share best practices and training
Blogs can be used to share best practices, tips, and other announcements about new technologies or marketing tools. In addition, intranet blogs can serve as a training tool for new staff, coaching them on a new skill or marketing technique for example. The intranet blog becomes an interactive forum for sharing experiences, judgments and insights. Organizations that do not have the luxury of face-to-face training meetings, but which have to pass on knowledge to staff in disparate locations will find that an intranet blog serves a valuable training function. Emails and other documents can always be sent, but think of the benefit of having a living, breathing archive of all training materials.

Knowledge Management blogs (K-Logs)
Intranet blogs are great repositories for the intellectual property of any organization. An oft quoted statistic is that "knowledge workers spend 35% of their productive time searching for information, while 40% of the corporate users report that they cannot find the information they need to do their jobs on their Intranets." Source - Working Council of CIOs.

K-Logs take information currently contained in many different locations throughout the organization ("silos') and place them all in one, easily accessed blog location. Emails, documents, multimedia files, bookmark list links, and pictures are all examples of information types than can all be included in one location on the blog.

Crisis Management
Blogs have a role to play in times of company crisis. In some ways those communication features needed in a crisis are inherent in blogs. Situations where blogs might be used include crisis response and recovery during and following natural disasters like those experienced on the Gulf Coast during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, financial and legal troubles, executive illness, anti-corporate activists, or some other public relations crisis.

Managing a crisis often demands that information be updated and distributed to stakeholders on a frequent basis. The ability for information to be quickly, even immediately, updated is a feature blogs provide.

Blogs are excellent listening tools that allow companies to establish direct rapport with stakeholders. In addition, because blogs can easily be updated during a crisis, they enable instant two-way communication with stakeholders and create a public record of opinions and related facts that helps minimize rumors and speculation. While blogs may not be the only tool needed to manage a crisis, they certainly have a place and should be a means of communication considered before a crisis ensues.

OK, that about wraps it up. If you're interested in learning more about the use of blogs for internal or associational communications, I encourage you to purchase the book Realty Blogging, as it contains even more information on this and many other pertinent topics related to real estate blogging.