Printer Friendly Version

A lot of people I know have been, or still are, in the restaurant business. And as restaurateurs, they're more than happy to share some insider information with me. Among the most important commandments for us to know as customers: Never, ever, tick off the chef.

If you do, it will no longer matter that the five star restaurant you're sitting in — with it's übercool designed interior and two-month waiting list ü is furnished with an exquisite presentation of tableware befitting the reception of some foreign dignitary. Because, as horrible as it may be for us to imagine, an angry chef has the power to "contaminate" your food. After one bite, your face will likely contort into something reminiscent of an Edvard Munch painting. And then your plans for an evening of haute cuisine will end up being an evening of gourmet gruel — something that can only be adequately described as being a mixture of swill and discarded bath water.

Let's face it, as nice as the presentation may be, you're really there for the food, aren't you? So if you want good food, keep the chefs happy.

The Importance of Fresh Content

Newbie intranet developers often try to mask stale and deficient content with a blaze of technological glory. We wow at the clever interface, dancing graphics, and a site that seems to address us by our first name. But eventually we'll all come to the realization that we haven't actually gained anything by visiting the site.

An intranet is one of those systems that doesn't end at rollout. There's no clear-cut separation between development and daily operation. Unlike launching a new corporate operating system or office suite — where only the occasional patch is applied after the system is placed into a production environment — an intranet is a constantly growing entity. In this respect, while many IT systems can be compared to a book with a definite beginning and end, an intranet is more like a newspaper that needs to be updated everyday.

While an intranet can certainly serve as a repository of archived information, the only way to maintain a daily following is by regularly providing users with a reason to come back. As such, it's important for intranet developers and content owners to view the maintenance of an intranet like a newspaper publication. If you want to stay on top, you need to provide readers with new information in a timely manner. Publishing the same newspaper articles day-in and day-out would be unthinkable, but if you don't update your intranet content regularly, that's precisely what you're doing.

The Influence of Content Owners

In past articles, I discussed many of the technological methods that can be employed to keep content fresh. But the most important component in all of this is the content owners — those tasked with the responsibility of filtering and updating the vast stores of information available on public domain as well as those developed in-house. Their influence on the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of this content should never be underestimated.

It doesn't take a degree in psychology to know that the happier a person, the better they will work. When we're under stress of a tight deadline, tired and over-caffeinated, forced to work in an inhospitable environment, or suffering from an odd ailment brought on by alien abduction, the strain will show in our work. Words will begin to lack sense as we read and re-read the same paragraph over-and-over... as we read and re-read the same paragraph over-and-over (I was just checking to see if you were paying attention).

So it's safe to say that the attitudes — positive or negative — of your content owners will reflect upon the quality of the information they place onto the intranet and the consistency with which this information is maintained. If your content owners believe in their system and take pride in it, they will be much more likely to put in that extra effort to ensure that it reflects well on the company and has value to those who make use of it. However, if content owners don't care, or were somehow dragged into the project, they will view their role in a negative light and adopt a "let's just do this and get it over with" attitude. They will see the daily activity of content management on par with other necessary nuisances like flossing or washing the dishes.

Here are five ways to help you maintain a healthy group of content owners:

1. Make It Easy To Manage Content

The easier it is to manage their content, the more likely they'll be to do so. If you provide content owners with all the necessary tools in which to input, change, and delete information, they will feel more comfortable managing their system. And this is especially important among those who may not be as technologically inclined as others.

It's a good rule not to make management tools overly complicated. Leave out the bells-and-whistles that developers sometimes have a habit of putting in — often for the sake of proving that it can be done — unless absolutely required or explicitly stated in project specs. These extras can end up being a hindrance to the content owners, complicating a process that should remain relatively simple. And above all else, content owners should never be exposed to raw HTML or script code unless they are experienced with it's proper usage.