Project management does not exist in a vacuum. We have embraced the various new methods of communication to encourage better collaboration and team-work. It is now practically inconceivable for a project not to be using email, tele-conferences, even video-conferencing to maintain contact with the participants.

But are we embracing the new technologies available now? Are we making best use of the tools we now have? With project teams becoming even more spread out over the globe, are we making best use of our new communication methods?

This series will look at the various new social media tools available to us, and how we can start to use them in our projects. Some of you will already be using some of these tools. I’d love to hear your stories about how they have worked for you – many of the uses are only now developing, so I’d love to hear your best practices!

I’m going to start with something you should all be familiar with, but may not have used in a project context – blogs.

Now, I’m assuming if you are reading this you know what a blog is, because, well, you’re reading one. They are a great tool for getting a message out, but also, thanks to allowing comments, a great way of gathering information too.

A project blog is useful because whoever in the team you allow to post (and I would encourage you allow everyone in the team to do so) can put up some information, and ask for feedback. No matter where in the world the members of your team are, they can read the article, and post their comments.

And don’t worry, this doesn’t mean you have to put your dirty washing out for the whole world to see! A blog could be internal to an organisation, or it could even be restricted to just project team members. If your team is across multiple organisations, you could have it password protected on an external server so only those you allow can see it. (This is even possible using major blogging platforms, like Blogger and WordPress, which allow you to set your own privacy settings.)

You can also use the blog to get your message out. Project status reports, risk logs, all the documents you use to manage the project, can be updated and placed onto the blog. This ensures everyone has access to the information they need and want, when they want.

Don’t take this as a replacement of other communication methods, though – if there is vital information that team members must have and read, then use the most appropriate tool, be that email, tele-conference, or even face to face meetings. But to make your job, and the jobs of your team members, easier and better, use the blog as an additional tool, not a replacement.

You can go a lot further than just a simple blog, of course, with other collaboration technologies. But I’ll come to these in a later post.

This is just one example of how a blog can be used. What about you and your teams? How have you been using blogs? What value do you get out of them? What do you recommend as best practice? Let me know!

Part of The Social Media Project Manager Series.