In ‘Using Blogs and Wikis to Ease Administration’, Linux Journal paints this flexible duo in a slightly new light. For small businesses, the two working in parallel are an effective, cheap (if not massively hyped) way of achieving your document management goals:

Wikis 

Can be used as a formal intranet, however, their biggest weakness is the very flexibility that makes them so powerful.

A good wiki needs a solid structure, this isn’t an inherent feature of a wiki but something that is created by each company. If a structure isn’t created or adhered to, wikis quickly become hard to navigate and bloated, leaving a messy, unusable intranet.

Because creating content is so easy, it’s not treated seriously. Unreadable typing and long waffly statements need to be edited out, but unless this practise is strictly inforced, the wiki winds up being the hardest place to get quick, simple information. Good documents are short documents.

Cleaning up your document and information system.

 It is a good idea to run an informal documentation system alongside your main intranet. This keeps the intranet confined to serious, well written documentation that is easy to navigate and extract information out of.

Blogs

To keep your wiki clean, it’s a good idea to keep short term relevent information out. Traditionally, it’s just emailed instead, but using a blog is just so much better.

Most businesses send an email around about the latest joke, news, updates, whos on leave or company get-togethers. This clutters inboxes like nothing else, disrupts workflows and offers no central place for discussion. A blog answers all these problems and so many more.

These two tools seem to lie well away from all the glitz and glamour of the ‘web 2.0 office suite’, but offer some serious goods. As always, contact us if you think it sounds like you, but just aren’t quite convinced ;)