How will you find readers for your blog?
OK, you’ve started a blog inside your company. Very good, but who knows about it? If you work for Microsoft or Sun Microsystems, no problem, you’ll be indexed. Similarly, if you work for a ten-person company, it will be easy to tell other employees about your blog. But imagine that you work for a European bank with multiple branches and dozens of intranets, how will you promote your blog?
If you’re in this situation and if your blog is hosted by your company, you are not — and you never will — part of the blogosphere.
In other words, the contents of your blog will not be available to search engines and to other tools specialized in blog searches. Neither Google nor Technorati will index what is hidden behind your company’s firewalls.
So how will you find readers for your blog? The best is to use old and proven recipes:
- Talk about your blog with your colleagues around the coffee machine
- Send e-mails to other colleagues you know, but are too far to share a coffee with you
- Build your audience by using word of mouth
- And above all, find a “champion” to stand behind your initiative, such as a high-ranked executive
Then, you’ll discover another blogger in your company, you’ll start a group, and one day, this group will include one hundred bloggers…
You also can download the latest free tool from Google, the “Google Desktop Search for Enterprise,” but use it cautiously. You might discover other blogs in your company, but you also will get access to non-protected documents — such as the next budget for your department.
