It’s not usability. It’s not design nor layout. The most important part of your intranet or portal is content. As I wrote on Get Strategic a few weeks ago, and to steal an old line from Bill Gates, content is still king.

But is all content created equal? Certainly not. Should it be? Definitely not, says intrepid aussie consultant James Robertson.

“I've written before than not all content needs to be of equal quality,” blogs Robertson in Let go of an obsession with intranet content quality. “More importantly, with all the challenges involved in delivering an effective intranet, is this really where we want to be focusing our efforts?”

Robertson is downplaying the importance of content, but that’s not his point. Were it his sole point, I would veraciously disagree because content is what the user seeks (be it in the form of a static page, an interactive tool or multimedia.

Robertson’s point is one of pragmatic use of available time and resources. “When there are limited intranet resources, a too-small intranet team, and no content management system, should we be picking on authors about the quality of content? Should we be spending our time conducting 2 hour to 2 day training sessions for all of our (100+) intranet authors?”

“I would argue that this is just intranet teams focusing on the aspects that they are most comfortable with, a practical and manageable issue to address. But it's also irrelevant when there is a need to develop a real strategy to create an intranet that aligns the site with real staff and business needs.”

If I’m interpreting him right, James is saying that there are differing levels of content and not all are as important as say, corporate announcements from executives or security policies. There are some types of content, perhaps United Way announcements or cafeteria schedules, that while important to some, shouldn’t necessarily be held to the same standard as the really important stuff. Robertson is right.

Standards and policies are requisite. They need not be overly bureaucratic or complex, but they are needed. However, focus your energies on the content that users really want including the big three:

• corporate news
• corporate policies
• human resource information

Empower content owners to look after their own content through the use of standards and even templates or a content management system (highly recommended as the ROI on these can be very beneficial) and focus on what you can reasonably control.

“Let go of this obsession!” writes Robertson. “I want to see presentations at intranet conferences about how to gain management support, on how to deliver new solutions, on how to meet the needs of specific staff groups. Not hour after hour on intranet content quality..."