Hello Thrivers! It is time to get back to the basics; to simplify how we approach content management in order to improve efficiency and usability. This blog will provide you with a quick summary of the The Top 5 Principles of Content Management to help you optimize how you Organize, Review, Rate, Delegate, and Archive your content on your intranet.
5 Principles to Successful Content Management
Focusing on principles, I was thrown back to a favorite childhood show of mine (a show you’ll recognize if you are a child of the ’70s, ’80s, or ’90s) – School House Rock with the song Counting by 5s. Yes, content management can be just as easy if you follow these 5 Principles of Successful Content Management.
1. ORGANIZE to Survive
Establishing a good organizational structure for content on your intranet is the foundation for success. Developing an internal communications strategy is vital for this.
Document versioning is also a critical component of organizing content on your intranet. Document versioning keeps employees informed on any changes or updates made to employee documents and enables them to look back through previous versions as well. This brings us to our next principle, review management.
2. REVIEW to Pull Through
Another basic to successful content management is strong document review management on your intranet. Assign content review managers to ensure content stays up to date and relevant on your intranet.
Additionally, ensuring that all published documents on your intranet have gone through proper approval channels for employee use is another foundation for successful content management. This can easily be done through content approval/publishing workflows.
3. RATE to Appreciate
Solicit and openly receive feedback on the content you are providing your employees. Open dialogue on the documents, policies, and content is important to the adoption rate and success of your intranet. The more useful content you provide on your intranet, the more your intranet will be used. This seems like a ‘no brainer’ but it is a misstep many companies make when assuming they know the content their employees need and want.
An easy way for your employees to provide quick feedback on content is through commenting and rating. Commenting allows employees an open forum to free form their feedback, while rating gives employees an ability to quickly ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ the content.
4. DELEGATE to Automate
Delegation is not only a significant factor in the success of your content management but also the success of your intranet. Empowering employees to own content on your intranet creates higher employee adoption rates and usability rates on your intranet and with your content. Delegation is simple, naming document owners and folder administrators to own and manage their respective content.
5. ARCHIVE to Stay Alive
Archiving is a common practice for content management that most people forget. After all, when you are just setting up your intranet you are worried about getting enough content in place to make it relevant to your employees.
But there comes a time when you have produced and published so much content it becomes overwhelming for your employees. That is where content archiving/clean-up comes into play, helping you keep your intranet content fresh and relevant. With Intranet Connections, you can even have established content archiving dates that can automatically archive documents after a certain period of time.
Leveraging Content Management Principles
Content management is a common struggle for organizations starting out with their first intranet and those that have had their intranet for over five years. Applying these principles, no matter the maturity of your intranet will engage your employees with the right content they need to efficiently perform their daily tasks.
For more information on how to successfully manage your content, check out this valuable resource:
