346 million people are reading blogs (state of the Blogosphere 2008)

Technorati has released its report, State of the Blogosphere / 2008, providing a view on the growth and application of blogs as a medium.

The report can be summed up in the statement "blogging is here to stay".

Notable to me in the report was that the fifth top topic and sixth most used tag was 'politics', and most of the other top twenty topics and tags were areas in which government has a significant influence and role.

While 12% of bloggers reported that they did so officially for their organisations, there was no breakdown between public or private organisations.

My assumption, based on my own observances, would be that the share of public sector bloggers would be highest in the US and Europe (where guidelines are in place and there is political and senior civil service support for blogging) and lowest in Australia (where guidelines are not yet in place).

Given the level of blog discourse already occurring on topics related to government services, perhaps Australian agencies need to more closely consider blogging as a communication and interaction tool.

Report highlights

• Technorati has indexed more that 122 million blogs since 2002,
  
• Bloggers are creating almost one million blog posts per day,
  
• Four in five bloggers post reviews of products or brands that they love (or hate),
  
• One-third of bloggers have been approached by companies to be brand advocates,
  
• 95% of the Top 100 US newspapers have journalist blogs (if you can't beat them, join them),
  
• 50% of bloggers receive more than 1,000 unique visitors per month, with 18% receiving more than 10,000,
  
• The more active a blog is, the greater its visibility and traffic, and
  
• Two-thirds of bloggers do so under their real identity.

Blogger demographics

• 36% of bloggers are aged 25-34 and 27% are 35-44. 23% are 45 or older,
  
• Two-thirds are male,
  
• 44% are parents,
  
• 70% have undergraduate degrees or higher, and
  
• 40% have incomes in excess of US$75,000 per year.

Blog types

• 79% of bloggers post on personal matters (topics of personal interest not associated with their work)
  
• 46% post on professional topics (about their industry and profession but not in an official capacity for their employer) - such as this blog
  
• 12% post on corporate topics (blog for their employer in an official capacity)

Top blog topics

• 54% blog about personal/lifestyle areas
  
• 46% blog about technology
  
• 42% blog about news
  
• 35% blog about politics

Benefits of professional/corporate blogging

• 54% say they have received increased professional recognition (better known in their industry),
  
• 26% have used their blog as a resume/reference in job seeking,
  
• 16% have more executive visibility within their organisation,
  
• 11% got promoted as a result of their blogging,
  
• 2% were fired or put on probation as a result of something they blogged about.

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Intranets Live online media channel launched

IBF has launched Intranets Live, a monthly 'online media channel' featuring interviews and commentary on intranets and intranet topics from around the world.

While it is useful to access a monthly podcast on what is occurring around the world in the intranet area, the price tag for this option would require careful consideration by intranet managers.

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One (government) portal to rule them all...

Uganda has become the latest nation to announce that it is following a centralised government portal strategy, launching a statewide web portal managed by their Ministry of ICT.

This reflects the approach taken in many other nations, including Australia (www.australia.gov.au and www.business.gov.au) to provide a central face to government online, to a greater or lessor degree.

Given the enthusiasm for this approach in the virtual world, are we likely to see a similar approach to government shopfronts, phone and paper-based transactions reflected at federal level over time?

We've certainly seen some state-based jurisdictions move to single shopfronts - at least in smaller jurisdictions.

However if this isn't the strategy in these channels, what is the rationale for providing different messages in different mediums?

Doesn't it weaken the argument for citizens to not need to know which agency they are dealing with?

• A single central port of call online
  
• Department/Agency-based offices and paper correspondence
  
• Service-based phone numbers
  

What's your view?

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Cut costs by expanding your intranet

Cost cutting is a fact of life across public and private sectors.

At some point every few years (or every year in some cases) organisations decide that the most effective way to improve productivity or profits is to reduce expenditures.

Intranets are a common target of cost cutting, either by delaying improvements to infrastructure, cancelling new functionality, reducing author training or cutting intranet staff numbers.

In some cases these decisions are justified, however with intranets often lacking high-level representation and sponsorship, there are cases where these cuts have serious negative impacts on the entire organisation.

So are there ways to position an intranet to avoid damaging cost cuts, and even increase the budget to the area in order to generate savings elsewhere?

I believe there are - and ways to make the intranet a central tool in a cost savings approach.

It may seem counter-intuitive to some, but I often advocate increasing intranet funding during cost cutting exercises as a lower cost channel for engaging staff and sharing information.

However for this to get traction, there are some preventative steps I believe an intranet manager needs to take to position the intranet,

1) Quantify and promote usage and satisfaction with the intranet
The value of an intranet is largely measured on the amount of use it receives by staff. This measure is, however, often more driven by perception than by actual numbers.

This is because senior leadership is generally the group least likely to make extensive use of an intranet - they have staff to make use of it on their behalf. However this group may (mistakenly) believe that intranet usage reflects their own personal use of the channel.

Quantifying and promoting the actual levels of intranet usage and satisfaction (and what functions staff are using) helps senior management understand the true value of the channel to the organisation beyond their personal experience. This leads to according it a higher priority within organisational planning.

During cost cutting this knowledge can shift the discussion from the potential savings in cutting back on intranet services to the increased cost of shifting to less efficient (and more expensive) communications and information sharing channels.

2) Identify a senior-level sponsor

Given that an intranet can benefit all parts of an organisation, provided the intranet's benefits and usage are quantitified and promoted, it becomes easier to identify a senior-level sponsor.

The most useful sponsor (for an intranet manager) is the senior executive with most to gain from an effective intranet - normally from a group with a significant need to share information or communicate in the most efficient way possible.

It is also important that the sponsor's area is regarded as business critical by the organisation, thereby ensuring they are well listened to in senior meetings.

3) Take appropriate steps to increase intranet awareness and usage
This should be an ongoing activity for all intranet managers.

Find out what tools or information would aid staff, make them available via the intranet and promote their availability.

This progressively grows an intranet's presence within an organisation while providing cost-savings as people aggregate towards the channel rather than using less efficient ways of accessing the tools and information they need in their roles.

4) Identify business processes the intranet can perform more cost-effectively than via other channels
This is the 'meat' in the cost-cutting sandwich. Before, or during, cost-cutting initiatives, it is important to identify productivity gains and business process efficiencies that can be moved by shifting functions to the intranet channel from other channels.

Start by building a list of potential efficiencies based on areas of savings including;

• Communication (savings versus travel, meeting time, printing, distribution, telecommunications and physical communities)


• Information collection (forms, surveys)


• Information velocity (increased information transmission speed = increased business efficiency)

With the above preventative measures in place, the next time your organisation needs to cut costs your intranet can be positioned as a tool to support cost savings rather than as a service to be trimmed.

Also see:

• The Recession-proof intranet - ways to advocate the value an intranet can add to an organisation


• 12 ways to use your intranet to save costs


• Implementing online forms


• Managers Say the Majority of Information Obtained for Their Work Is Useless, Accenture Survey Finds

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Blog post discussed in podcast report

I've posted earlier about how the Holz and Hobson report picked up on one of my posts and decided to use it as the central topic of one of their radio shows.

The show was held a little over a week ago, and I realised I'd not yet linked to it in eGovAU, so here it is.

FIR Call-In Show #7: The employee communications-intranet connection

The show can be downloaded or listened to online.

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