Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | O | Online

Getting a handle on content.

Article Excerpt
What's the number-one asset your intranet possesses? A Word document with valuable library secrets? A spreadsheet with earnings forecasts for Google for the next several years? (If your intranet does indeed have such an object, please contact me privately.) No, the most valuable asset any intranet can possess is the trust of its users. As previous columns have discussed, when designing, creating, and promoting your intranet, you have in essence created a tacit contract with your users. You have committed to maintaining your intranet as the place for timely, accurate, and useful organizational information. Out-of-date, extraneous content sounds the death knell of any intranet. One or two unsatisfactory experiences are enough to turn off users, who will quickly revert to using other channels as their primary means of accessing corporate information. Thrice forwarded e-mails, the lunchroom bulletin board, and paper backups will step in to fill the void your broken intranet has left. Nature abhors a vacuum.

Just make sure all of your content is up to date. Simple problem, simple solution, right? If only it were that easy. Maintaining the intranet is usually only one of many tasks wing for the Webmaster's attention and, while vital to the healthy functioning of the organization, a bit too much work for one person to do in isolation.

SELF-UPDATING, IN-WARD THINKING

One solution is to let any and all content owners throughout the organization update their own content. Giving them FTP accounts and letting them have at it is one approach, but there are pitfalls to be considered. First is the question of standards. Does your intranet use style sheets, templates, and other methods of enforcing both stylistic and technical consistency? The answers to these questions should be yes and yes. If pages are being updated in a stream that is outside your purview, then ensuring that the appropriate style sheets and...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!