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1 July 2007
Harnessing User-Generated Content Through Your Intranet- Intranets Today
The intranet offers a unique opportunity to share content. However, you must empower users to participate by providing employees the tools to create, capture, and converse within a sensible governance framework.
Managing content and social networking tools within the firewall requires a slightly different approach than what we are familiar with in the outside world of the internet. Sexy sites like YouTube, Flickr, and MySpace have all brought the SNIF-ing debate to the front door of the corporate world. SNIF-ing refers to "social networking within the firewall." Another related, if not quite as amusing, acronym to add to your collection is SMIF-ing "(social media within the firewall)."
The good news is that employees are probably interacting with these kinds of tools on the open web already, so for many, a comfort level already exists. Yet the trick is turning this to our advantage to harness user-generated content on our intranets. After all, each employee has his or her own valuable knowledge and experience to contribute, much of which has not been captured in the past. With new tools and approaches, we can harness people's thoughts and knowledge for future use.
It is time to take advantage of the fact that people like to talk to each other. Generating content for the intranet no longer has to be the sole preserve of the overworked webmaster.
SNIF Me?
So which social tools should an employer provide in the workplace? What will encourage meaningful knowledge exchange rather than fostering the exchange of idle gossip behind a proverbial online water cooler? Based upon my experience, there are a number of tools to consider that make it easy for users to contribute with ease:
Wiki Functionality
A wiki is, quite simply, a shared online page that (potentially) everyone can update. The most famous of these is Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. A wiki can be used to create a knowledge base or reference resource for staff, researchers, sales teams, or even customer service representatives. Within the firewall, it is highly likely that you will want some kind of controls over content like the final definition of your next product description, for example. Here's where we deviate from the external scenario and provide a tool that includes a simple workflow for mass collaborative authoring. A knowledge base tool for the corporate world should enable an administrator to approve content that is submitted by an end user. People can also comment on the definition and the intranet administrator can then continuously improve on the definition or FAQ answer.
RSS & Quick Links
In the context of an intranet, Really Simple Syndication (RSS) allows businesses to quickly subscribe to content from an external source. An instance of this may be where you want to have news from the stock exchange feed posts to your intranet page every morning. The real beauty of this is that you don't have to update any of the content yourself. In fact, strictly speaking, neither does the end user. What you can also do is allow an expert on a particular knowledge area to share their own bookmarks to useful RSS resources through their del.icio.us bookmarks, for example. By adding quick links to these valuable resources via the intranet, everyone can benefit and learn from the knowledge experts.
Blogs and Forums
In business, blogs are frequently used in the external web space to demonstrate a company's expertise or steer thought on a product or company's reputation (in good and bad ways I might add). It's unlikely that you want Joe Blow in the mailroom telling us his life history on your intranet, but when blogs are used to harness content from knowledge-area specialists or the CEO, that's another story.
Blogger Bill Ives (http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/2006/06/many_wikis_work.html) provides an excellent example of Motorola "getting their hands dirty" as an early adopter with 2,700 internal blogs. In addition, they are preparing to share information from the existing blogs and wikis with their 500 live extranet sites, which they use to collaborate with partners.
Many first-generation intranets used forum tools, but a blog is a different animal. A blog has a mind of its own. Unlike a forum, a blog is typically a one-way communication channel, from the author, which appears strictly in date order (instead of broken into conversational topics). Though many do include categories, they aren't terribly granular and aren't generally read by category. When deciding between the two, a forum offers more interactivity between many participants. It also allows you to implement security on a particular topic or field which may be important when we're talking about sensitive information within the company or distinct knowledge topics that only a few people are interested in. A blog, however, offers an excellent way for a subject-matter expert or CEO to educate and inform an audience.
A Shared Corporate Vocabulary
An important part of a good knowledge management strategy, which also helps encourage user engagement, is capturing a shared set of terms from around the company. In their book, Virtual Teams: People Working Across Boundaries with Technology (2000, Wiley), world-leading organizational-networking experts Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps refer to "shared but secret information" in developing a core sense of belonging in a team or the wider organization. Creating a knowledge base of common terms, definitions, and acronyms (of which there may be thousands in some companies), users grow closer together. Within your intranet, allow users to post new terms and project acronyms to you for final approval. You can still have overall say in the matter but they're generating the fundamental content for you.
Staff Offers
Tired of receiving a bulk email blast about someone's used car? Provide a place where employees can post messages like these to the intranet themselves, where other interested people can take advantage—if they want to. This sort of tool can be your firm's own version of eBay or a classifieds notice board, where users submit personal items for sale, and management can offer staff rewards in the form of discounts at the local department store or cheap tickets as incentives.
Project Workspaces
Provide end users with their own project spaces. Teams often need to share specific content, so why should the IT department or webmaster have to publish it for them? This only slows the process down. A secure shared environment for each specific project is an ideal way to offer controlled flexibility in your publishing environment. Each team member can contribute content and a third party doesn't need to be involved. Teams can share their deadlines, project news, and updates, and collaborate on documents through a forum. Team members who aren't co-located with the rest of the team can get instant access to exactly the same content and participate in online discussion. Afterwards, projects can be archived for future reference, if needed. In this way, your company doesn't have to reinvent the wheel every time a similar project is initiated.
Managing User-Generated Content
So now that you've developed an open, sharing environment with interactive tools to capture user-generated content, how do you keep track of everything that's going on? How do you make people accountable?
Accountability Checklist
* Use an approvals workflow process. When a user submits a news article, for example, it can be checked for accuracy and relevance and vetoed by an administrator.
* Track intranet statistics. These statistics should be a natural part of your intranet system. With a good intranet system, you shouldn't have to go out and buy a new module just for this.
* Look at overall hits. What content is popular, what's working? For example, if you're not generating much content in the forums, consider introducing "straw man" posts to get conversations going.
* Monitor applications that are generating value-added content such as the FAQs and Project Spaces. Assign responsibilities to certain authors to oversee activity and act as advocates.
* Allow users to rank contributions to the knowledge base to continually improve the quality of information.
* Measure user contributions through the forums. A good system will allow each user to be ranked according to how much they contribute to conversations and problem solving.
* Help build trust so people feel comfortable using online tools by featuring a photo and unique signature for each participant.
* Convert traditional communication vehicles, such as newsletters, into a more interactive format that encourages value-added content.
* Cut down the number of emails being sent and encourage users to contribute content via online tools that are shareable, timely, opt-in, and performance targeted.
Ultimately, it all comes down to taking advantage of the fact that employees actually like talking to each other. Give them the tools to keep conversations alive. This should be an integral part of any successful knowledge management program. You will find that your staff can help you to build a truly relevant and constantly updated business resource that engages people on multiple levels, and may actually reduce your workload.
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