Prescient's Catherine Elder highlights some of the common audience challenges on a website or intranet:

1. Senior staff want something to go on the home page, and then something else and something else and so on

2. Users complain that they can’t find information or that it is buried deep within the bowels of the site and it takes forever to find it or is impossible to remember where it is

Both these problems are being experienced not only on intranets but also on external websites.

Read all of Catherine Elder's article on Developing personas

If you're in North America and didn't make the IntraTeam Event in Denmark earlier this month, the next great intranet conference is coming-up next month: The Intranet Insider World Tour Live, New York City, NY, April 16 – 17.

Here are some of the intranets being showcased at this year's conference:

• Sprint Nextel

• Con Edison

• IKEA

• Siemens

• IBM

• Delloite

• Thomson Reuters

• And more!

I'll be co-chairing this 2-day conference in NYC (April 16 - 17) that showcases some of the best intranets going. This intimate and interactive conference event builds on the webinar and brings together the experts and practitioners from leading intranets.

This conference is taking into account the global financial crisis and is AMAZINGLY INEXPENSIVE (only $900 for 2-full days!).

Don't miss the best buy of the year and Register now for the Intranet Insider World Tour LIVE.

A strategy has definition, is well documented and shared by all stakeholders, and has key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics. The strategy provides direction for executable actions (in the context of this article, we will treat strategy as synonymous with plan, though a strategy in the broader definition might contain many plans). For an intranet, a typical strategy would include the following elements:

• Vision

• Mission

• Target audience defintion / segmentation

• Governance

• Goals

• Objectives

• Action plans

• KPIs (or CSIs)

Strategy is independent of technology... read my full column Intranet strategy: planning a successful intranet.

ALSO READ:

Intranet planning

Steve cites the emergence and proliferation of “Buzz word Bingo” in board rooms and meeting places all over the U.S (see Buzzword bingo). Every time a suit spews a buzz word such as “paradigm shift” or “value add” an employee marks a bingo card with a bushel of buzz words; get five in a row and shout “bingo!”

The new way: “Creative” social media writing:

• More voices, more people

• More conversational language

• More storytelling

• Dramatically less jargon

• Being driven by social media

“Corporate communicators fight the same battles: deadlines, and creating safe copy (something that will safely go through the approval process),” says Steve, founder of Crescenzo Communications. “Content is king, and content comes down to writing for social media, which is about people: conversation and story-telling,” says Steve.

Case study: Children's Hospital of Atlanta

• Sitation: recruit people to work at their organization.

• Program: lots of competition.

• Solution: Set up a social media rectuiting site “Are you strong enough?” (http://blog.areustrongenough.com). Includes a blog from current employees about what it is like to work at the hospital.

Example: “I am a nurse in the PICU at Egleston where team work is seen every day”

Case study: Electric and gas utility in Arizona

• Situation: to educate people about safety.

• Problem: really boring topic.

• Solution: story-telling: find actual people to tell their stories.

Example: “It happens in a split second and nothing is ever the same again” accompanied by a video of the person affected.

Tips for social media writing

1- Follow the 3-30-3-30 rule. Let pepole choose how much time they want to spend: 3 seconds, 30 seconds, 3 minutes, or 30 minutes.

• 3 seconds - consider the headline or Tweet

• 30 seconds - read a headline and a blurb / summary of a story

• 3 minutes - read a story,watch the video clip or listen to the auido clip

• 30 minutes - read, watch, listen, rate the content, follow links to friends, discussion forums, etc.

2- Don't be afraid to take chances.

3- Come down from 30,000 feet!

4- Always tie it to the business.

5- Report from the field whenever possible.

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Important ingredients for a successful intranet:

• Leadership

• Teamwork

• Empowering employees

• Optimizing activities & processes

• Focusing on the needs of the customer (external)

Direction of intranets:

• Portal concepts – aggregating content and tools into a single screen

• Integration of applicatons – HR, business applications, collaboration spaces

• Social media – user-generated content

• Management awareness – senior management is slowly becoming aware of intranets

Changes in business:

• Virtual teams (geographically dispersed)

• New expectations

• Tele-working (working remotely)

• Smart phones (mobile access of the intranet)

The intranet is on the verge of breaking:

• Today's typical intranet is not sustainable

• Too top-down

• Not business-oriented

• Not people-oriented

• Out-of-date

• Arthritic – too hard to publish

• Closed – limited to employees (closed to partners & contractors)

• Sendetary – limtied to office, PCs

One out of five intranets is in stage 3 (the intranet is “the way of working” now); 43% are stage 2 (it will be “the way of working” within in 1-2 years); 1/3 hope to evolve to stage 3 within 4-5 years).

Views of Stage 1 intranet:

“Our focus this year and last year is around communication, navigation and self-service, as these are areas we have the most control over.”

View of Stage 2 intranet

“Our biggest challenge fo rnext year is to change the culture of the company to not use email for example as a communication/ collaboration medium.”

View of Stage 3 intranet

“Portal usage is include in personal KPI for our perfrmance management system. This included measurements on quality / quantity of project updates, information published, etc. This has encourage people to integrate the portal in to their respective business processes.”

Is the intranet is the main entry point to applications... (the user has to go to the intranet to get to key applications)?

• Business applications & process support – 77% of stage 3 intranets; 45% of stage 2 intranets; 27% of stage 1 intranets

• Management reporting, dashboards – 55% of stage 3 intranets; 30% of stage 2 intranets; 9% of stage 1 intranets

• Employee life and career (HR) -- 77% of stage 3 intranets; 45% of stage 2 intranets; 27% of stage 1 intranets

• Management reporting, dashboards – 90% of stage 3 intranets; 74% of stage 2 intranets; 58% of stage 1 intranets

OTHER NOTABLE FINDINGS:

• Stage 3 intranets have more top leadership & operational participation in intranet steering committees.

• C-level executives now participate on the intranet steering committees of half of the respondent companies that have a steering committee (about 1/3 of the respondent companies have a steering committee; roughly 1/6th of the total respondents therefore have a senior executive actively involved)

• Only 45% have networks or communities of practice for content contributors

• Only 36% of the organizations have “clearly designated business owners for content”

• only 1% stage 1 intranets have wikis in general use (optimized); 35% are testing intranets (in some parts)

• 10% of stage 3 intranets have wikis in general use (optimized); 74% are testing intranets (in some parts)

• 2% of stage 3 intranets have wikis in general use (optimized); 30% are testing intranets (in some parts)

ADDITONAL READING:

Learning from the best intranets

Selling an intranet redesign

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Intranet strategy

• What does the intranet do to help the organziation achieve its objectives? To do what? Does your intranet have an intranet strategy document that you can take away and share?

• If you cannot answer these questions, you don't have an intranet strategy.

• Intranet strategy supports the decisions employees make – enabling them to make better decisions that will make your organzation flourish.

Case study example: U.K. Government

Last year, the British government lost the details and files of 25 million people (1/3 of the population). There was in fact a policy on how to handle citizen's personal information on the government intranet called the “DPA Policy.” But no one could find it, so no one knew what to do. The lack of a defined strategy failed the government because while the content existed, it couldn't be found or used.

“Every manager wants to reduce the risk of their business,” says Martin White. Develop a list of the risks at your organization and find ways the “intranet can help reduce organizational risks” (and create opportunities).

Case study: Hospital

A European hospital intranet had 8,000 different guiideline documents (e.g. relating to medical procedures, etc.) – with no search engine. Traditionally, users (doctors and other professionals) had to navigate a folder structure. A discussion with the hospital's risk manager revealed that the hospital spent $5 million in insurance. But, if they could put in a search engine to help doctors find medical guidelines within 30 seconds, they could reduce their insurance substantially. The hospital spent $100,000 on the search engine, and received full pay-back within 3 months, and saved $1 million in insurance as a result.

User centric design

There are two classes of users:

• End users

• Contributors (aka editors, publishers, admins.)

Target user dsired outcomes – the end-state content or tool.

• Phase 1 – Research (interviews, notes)

• Phase 2 – Analysis (factoids, spreadsheet, sort data, identifiy patters, cluster analysis)

• Phase 3 – Represent/Communicate (dept. findings, specific personas, etc.0

• Phase 4 – Take Action

“If it can't be found, it's not helpful,” says Howard McQueen.

Howard advocates the transformation of information into “assets” by keeping it “trustworthy and up-to-date.” Howard's information 'asset' model states that information...

• requires a steward;

• must be owned;

• must be compliant;

• be the best available – balanced by the need;

• must be trustworthy; and

• must be readily discoverable.

On the Johnson Controls intranet (10,000 employees) if content is not reviewed it is expired from the search engine catalogue (variable time limit depending on the content type).

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