From: Memo
To: Date: Subject: J.P. Rangaswami Chris Mitchell 31 May, 2008 Blogs at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein Information sharing is vital for success in business. One excellent way to share information on a daily basis is by blogging. Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW), a German investment bank, began internally blogging throughout much of the company in 2003. Employees who blogged were encouraged to share ideas, request and criticisms. This vastly enhanced the information sharing at DrKW. Blogging has shown to be the fastest form of information sharing in the world and it is a great idea that DrKW set up blogs for internal use, sharing much valuable information with great efficiency and generating many new ideas to help improve the company. Most other business will use blogging to communicate out to customers and prospects. External blogging is good for different reasons, it shows the world what your company is doing right and can handle many FAQ's. But, it comes along with risk, client confidentiality is at risk along with valuable company secrets. That is why Rangaswami recommended a create-review-edit-release "workflow" for external blog postings. This way DrKW's media relations would have a chance to look at every
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posting, making sure it was in the best interest of DrKW, before it was posted. These blogs will also keep record of postings for legal and compliance purposes. External blogging is a great idea for DrKW only if the who employees are posting on the blog are "experts on the subject, have a clear and passionate voice and above all show maturity in their writing."(7) The internal blog should be much more laid back and employees should feel free to say what ever they please, keeping in mind that the rest of the company, include their superiors, can read it. Blogging is growing at an exponential rate. In 2005 there were 9 million blogs in the world, with 40,000 being added daily. The Blogsphere has become a hectic place, with so many blogs on the same topic that it's nearly impossible to keep up with the most recent blog. But, thanks to search engine technology the blogsphere is much easier to navigate. DrKW's blog would be easily found with a search engine and the web address would be made available to all DrKW clients. Blogging is all about the sharing of information in the most efficient way possible. Blogs get information out quickly, but how do the readers know that the information is accurate and up to date? This is why a system needs to be in place for company blogs where information is checked for accuracy by top officials and kept up to date. The top of every company blog should be a statement referring to how the information provided is guaranteed to be accurate and up to date. DrKW's "workflow" system would work perfectly in order to keep the company blog accurate and prevent any controversy that could arise from false information.
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