Business value of blogs

Some survey results

2004-11-15T01:10:00.000+11:00

Here are some numbers of the participation:

African Coutries: 1
Asian Countries: 5
Australia and New Zealand: 117
Central American Countries: 8
European Countries: 92
Middle Eastern Countries: 2
North American Countries: 178
South American Countries: 12

Unfortunately I hoped to get more participants from Asia, but it was hard to find Information Professional Associations that gave me the permission of posting my survey to their membership. And if, the participation wasn't high enough. Shame!

Because of this result, I will concentrate on the three main particpated countries Australia/New Zealand, Europe and North America.

Members and readers of the following associations, discussion groups or blogs participated (plus others outside the ones I mention here):

Associations:
AKMS, ALIA, BC Library Association, Freepint, IKMS, LKN, SLA Asia, SLA Australia/New Zealand, SLA Europe, SLA Illinois, SLA Toronto, SLA Western Canada

Blogs:
j's scratchpad, Knowledge Jolt with Jack

Discussion Groups:
KMPro Chicago yahoo group, LIS CILIP, LIS LINK, LIS UKOLUG, Act-KM

Blog Survey: Deadline ended

2004-11-14T11:08:00.000+11:00

After I postponed the deadline of my survey a few times, I finally closed my blog survey today.

The participation amounts 419, which I am very happy about. On this note thank you very much to everyone who filled out the survey.

Now I am going to analyse the survey and process the data into my thesis. I will give you some results of the survey shortly.

However, I hope you are appreciative that I won't publish the main results until I have finished my thesis.

Richard Giles blog: Corporate Blogging - My Talk From Perth Blog Nite.

2004-10-28T11:52:00.000+10:00

Yesterday was the Blognite in Perth, where 8 speakers talked about all sites of blogging.

Among other things, Richard Giles, who works for Sun Microsystems, talked about corporate blogging.

Here is the link to his presentation. Very interesting thoughts....

My Talk From Perth Blog Nite.

All about blogging

2004-10-26T16:56:00.000+10:00

This weblog, owned by Dr. Laurel Clyde, gives an excellent overview of blogging.

She also wrote a book called "Weblogs and Libraries", ISBN 1843340968

The reason for this blog

2004-10-22T17:25:00.000+10:00

When I started researching on the topic for my thesis, I found heaps of information about how to use a blog, who uses blogs and how blogs have revolutionised the internet. Some information I found about how blogs can be implemented into organizations, but very few about how blogs have revolutionised the library and information science profession.

I asked myself what could be the reason for that. Are Information Professionals not interested in blogs? Don't they know what they can do with blogs? Do they think to maintain blogs is too timeconsuming? Didn't they find out yet how valuable blogs CAN be for their profession and their company? Don't they know what they are missing???

Now, just a couple of months later, a lot of conversation, ideas and thoughts were going around. I was impressed, how many interesting articles, websites and blogs I found that were published during that time. But most interesting were the people I communicated with. Its amazing how fast moving todays communication is.

I realised that this topic is VERY current and a lot of people are interested in implementing blogs into organizations or maintaining public blogs for late-breaking news.

Then I came to the idea what would happen if I am setting up my own blog? Hey, not a bad idea, I thought. Why not giving it a try and see what will happen. So I did!

There are a few reasons that made me creating my own blog:

1. I don't just want to maintain and research about blogs, I want to be part of the blogosphere to get my own idea of how valuable blogging is.
2. I hope my own blog helps me to focus my research more effectively. Every day I am researching, I find more and more current stuff which makes me feel like I can never stop. But I have to concentrate on my writing one day as well. The blog's format makes it easier to link to and track what I find on the web.
3. The main reason why I set up this blog, is to expect that as many bloggers as possible read my blog and post their comments on my blog, share ideas, announce their experiences and give their opinion on blogs as a source of business news.

That's why I called my blog "businessblog-ideafactory". So please don't be shy to post on this blog. I am excited to see what's happening.

CU on my blog!

Blog Survey: Participations needed

2004-10-22T13:41:00.000+10:00

As I mentioned earlier, I am doing a web survey with Information Professionals and Knowledge Managers worldwide to find out about their value and usage of blogs.

A lot of participants have already filled out my survey. In this regard thanks a lot to all of them. Anyway I still need more participants, especially from Europe and Australia/New Zealand, to enable representative results of my survey. The more participants the better the results!!!

With your help, I will be able to offer you results to determine what role weblogs should play in your every day research activities as well as to better maximize the value of blogs as a source of business news and information.

I would be very grateful if you could fill out my survey as well, if you haven't done it yet. Or if you know anyone who might be interested in this topic, please feel free to send them my blog address and the link to my survey.

Its so easy to fill out and takes less than 5 minutes of your time. You just need to click on the following link, that will take you to the initial web survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=30335625681

The new deadline for the survey is: 04. November 2004

For questions or feedback, please contact me: julia.habermann@gmx.de or +61 2 9436 1514

REMEMBER: The more participants the better the results!!!

My story...

2004-10-19T17:09:00.000+10:00

I am a student of Information Science and Economics from the University of Applied Science Cologne in Germany. Currently I am in Sydney, writing my thesis about "The usage and value of blogs for Information Professionals and Knowledge Managers as a source of business news and information", to identify how it has altered their research techniques and what efforts they make to integrate the use of blogs into their workflow.

I strongly believe that blogs will play a big role for organizations over time. Blogs can help Information Professionals to aim at a better research technique and a global communication and networking channel. I am sure it will help them to determine what role blogs should play in their everyday research activities as well as to assist the users they support to better maximize the value of blogs as a source of business news and information.

According to the literature, some Information Professionals and Knowledge Managers have embraced weblogs as a knowledge-sharing and communication tool. There is evidence that blogs are particularly useful for late-breaking news, but very little written about how Information Professionals handle the challenges of blogs, which can be lack of good search engines and difficulty with verifying accuracy of their contents.

To find out more about the usage and value of blogs for Information Professionals as a source of business news and information, I designed and sent out a web survey to Information Professionals ans Knowledge Managers. Most of the participants are members of information professional or knowledge management associations from all over the world. My survey ends end of this month and I am very excited about the results.

During my research and following the survey results so far, I realised that a lot of Information Professionals believe in this value of blogs for their work and their company and are willing to use them, but they don't know how to manage the use of blogs.

So this survey should help me to analyse how corporate Information Professionals and their internal clients using blogs today? How valuable are blogs for making business decisions? What efforts are they making to integrate the use of blogs into their workflow?

I am planning to complete my thesis beginning of next year. The results of my survey and my research will be published by most of the participating associations for their members. And naturally I will post a report of my outcomings on this blog.