The phenomenon of blogging emerged as software supporting the ability for non-programmers to regularly create and add to web pages became widely available.

Blogging is a way for individuals to demonstrate and share what knowledge they have, and to host discussions on their ideas. Dedicated bloggers have come an established part of the alternative and mainstream media.

As part of an enterprise collabrative strategy, blogging is a good tool for team leaders to share their personal knowledge and insight on news and plans afoot.

"Personal" is an important word here because blogs are generally a less formal medium than news, and readers expect and appreciate more intimate and less filtered content - rather than being forced to consume more PR.

Most street-level bloggers actively solicit comments on their posts - while more public figures and leader may not - avoiding trolls and vandals.

Advantages:

• A Pedestal for your thoughts* - yah that feels good eh.
• Accessible (and accountable) Leadership - Credibility of leaders in an orgnaization can be boosted if they maintain a blog as a channel of communication with the rank and file.

Disadvantages

• the downside of blogging is that it can waste time - it can be a vanity medium, wheras true collaboration via wiki might produce more goodwill and knowledge.
• shares some of the disadvantages of listserves - too much talking and not enough listening and learning.
• too many people start their own when they should join another blog as an occasional contributor.

Best practices

• You should blog if there are more people who would like to interact with you than you can make time for. (otherwise skip it, unless you have a genuine passion to blog.)
• A blog is a good way to keep in touch with a large number of people, a blog feed is better than a form letter - and wastes less paper.
• If you don't think you can speak freely, don't bother.
• a blog is a great place to launch a new idea or trial balloon.
• If you don't allow comments on the blog, at least invite comments by email and maintain an FAQ which addresses the issues.
• Have a blog which integrates with your wiki or intranet and link main keywords into collaborative documents on those topics.
• don't discuss or argue in a blog. Reply once and link to a wiki.

I introduced blogging into the classroom this past semester to model it for teachers. I placed assignments, quizzes, powerpoint presentation and anything class related on the blog. The students liked it because they already do it. The teachers liked it because they saw how interactive it was and how students that wouldn't talk in class would blog, then we would/could talk about it in class.