To begin with – A big salute to all Intranet content authors, you all are awesome!!!
We have all read of one of the below –
Content is the King !!!
Best Intranets keep their users engaged with refreshed content!!
Effective Intranets regularly audit their content – ROT !!!!! … and may more
All of the above are absolutely spot on, but only a content author understands the pain…
Intranet are productivity platforms and core to our work life. Lately traditional intranets are getting transformed into digital workspaces that support users with its rich outcomes based approach. Content has always been a topic of discussion, it has kept Digital Managers and Intranet owners always looking for newer ideas and better ways of ensuring the Intranet continues to add value to its user base.
Content Authoring Challenges
- Lack of time and resources
- Useful content demands planning, time, creativity and knowledge. Authoring intranet content faces conflicting priorities with other ’more important’ things.
- Lack of SME information
- Not everyone can write meaningful content. This requires in-depth information on the topic. Asking only the ‘available’ resources (that sometimes may be not very experienced) to write content will not produce useful outcomes. Writing usable and useful content for Intranets needs a mix of resources including- Content Writer, SME, Ux Designer.
- Content Author role
- Staff are nominated and have to take time out of their schedule and BAU activities to invest in writing quality content. People move on in their roles and the content stays behind with no ownership.
- Ensuring the existing content is still meaningful
- Intranet content usually is a mix of news, company policies, processes, guides and manuals, people profiles and informative knowledge acquired via people experiences. This information needs periodic review and starts by identifying owners. Various analytics and reporting tools, scripts can be used to generate reports that can outline matrix about the existing content.
- Forming a Community of Practice for your intranet may help with this. Of course this requires commitment from the company leadership.
- Adding new relevant content
- Digital workspace content includes, text, videos, interactive content, infographics, images and more. As outlined earlier we believe that effective content writing requires a team of people with at least Content Writers, SMEs, Ux Designer.
So what do Content Authors ask for ?
Time and resources in short –
- Pre-defined templates and guidelines (specially for responsive design portals)
- Design and style guidelines predefined in the intranet
- A easy to use CMS ( um.. SharePoint )
- Timely assistance from SME’s
- Access to a Ux designer who can convert boring text into something nice and interesting
- Commitment from senior stakeholders/ leadership team, their time and ensuring other parts of the business provide timely resources for any support required
- Training and editorial guidance
- Content authors need timely feedback to ensure the outcomes are aligned to the community needs. Content authors needs a platform to connect and share ideas. This can be accomplished via digital and various collaboration tools alternatively content writers can form their own community of practice to share ideas and feedback.
- Acknowledgment on their hard work and finally —
- Content creation doesn’t have to be a boring job, few Cups of coffee ( a bottle of red may be for some ) and peace should do the trick.
May the force be with you content authors!!!
About Prometix: At Prometix, we design implement and support Microsoft based technology solutions that help our client’s staff to more easily use and share information as individuals and in teams. We work with our clients to establish a structure that makes information easier to create, store, find and share with others. We’ve worked hard to understand how people want to access and share information.
For more information on our success stories please feel free to call us on (02) 8072 0666 or email enquiries@prometix.com.au
