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Intranet owners and content managers are a lot like television executives and program directors. They need to develop content to cater to a demographically diverse audience, and keep them interested enough to return on a regular basis.

Developing content and deciding when and where to post it is a gentle balancing act for intranet owners and content managers. If they put too much time and effort into any one user group, they risk alienating other users who will then complain that their intranet doesn't offer them anything useful. On the other hand, if they try to cover too much ground, they risk spreading themselves thin and will end up doing many things adequately but no one thing very well.

To successfully develop intranet content and connect with an audience, intranet owners and content managers must have a good understanding of their audience's professional background and target their content to each user demographic.

Speak your audience's language

An intranet's audience is as wide and varied as the employees that make up the organization. Users have different professional backgrounds, skill sets, and areas of expertise. And depending on their job, they might also have a language that's unique to their profession.

Every user group has its own content needs -- not only in term of subject matter, but also in terms of content style and tone. For example, it's unrealistic to expect a lay person to absorb a highly technical white paper with the same understanding as an engineer.

When developing intranet content, always keep these tips in mind:

Make sure that the content managers for a particular intranet section have a similar background as the content's intended audience.

Use plain English. The language must be clear and concise for as wide an audience as possible. Remember that the people doing the reading won't necessarily have the same professional background as the person doing the writing. If you're a techie, writing a series of technical how-to's, don't think that everyone reading these how-to's will have an engineering degree.

Keep it simple; it's not literature. Your primary goal is to convey a coherent message to your users, so don't use extravagant words just for the sake of using them. You'll just end up sounding pompous and verbose. You're writing for your users; you're not writing to amuse yourself.

Avoid buzzwords such as "synergy", "paradigm", "proactive" and catch phrases such as "think outside the box", "hit the ground running", and "grow your business" at all costs. Buzzwords and catch phrase are fillers used to bump up the word count. Buzzwords and catch phrases pollute clear writing and are the hallmark of amateurish writing. When writers use buzzwords and catch phrase they're basically saying, "I have no idea what I'm talking about."

Don't be afraid to sound human. Some writers get so caught up trying to sound "professional" that their writing lacks all humanity and sounds like it was generated by a computer. Humanity and professionalism aren't mutually exclusive. It's possible to be interesting and professional at the same time.

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