The old computer adage - garbage in, garbage out - also applies to intranets. An intranet is only as good as its content and how the content is presented. Use these tips to make sure your small business' intranet works as a strategic tool.
What goes up, must come down
Assign responsibilities for sub-sections of the intranet to ensure that all sections are kept up to date. Generally, responsibilities are divvied up by departmental lines - the sales department will be responsible for sales information, HR will keep everyone posted on administrative and personnel matters, and so on. If your company does not consist of these departments it can be equally effective to task certain staff members to maintain an area. These section masters for example, will be in charge of deleting the notice about the July company picnic immediately after the event takes place rather than after snow hits the ground. They are also responsible for deciding what new material should be posted.
Keep an eye on the big picture
Some company intranets sprout pages like crabgrass taking over a lawn. Everybody and his CEO adds their two bits (or should we say two bytes?) to the point where the intranet becomes massive, impossible to search, and slow. Somebody, whether it's the head of the company, the firm's chief technologist, or just someone who's interested in the Internet, needs to rein in intranet content developers and otherwise act as a gatekeeper, making sure that only valuable information is posted.
Write content guidelines
Many businesses fall into the trap of simply converting whatever printed material or computer files they have into HTML, the browser programming language, and posting it on the Web. Avoid this by establishing guidelines on how to modify materials for the medium. In addition to explaining the best way to display information on the intranet, your guidelines should go over what type of information is permitted on the intranet and what is not. For example, your firm wouldn't want any material on its intranet that might be offensive. Briefing company employees about copyright laws is also a good idea.
Linking up
Relevant material should be cross-referenced. Make it easy for someone to switch back and forth among similar topics or from one department page to a related section. For example, your company's price list should be linked to marketing literature that describes the products' features. Also consider adding links from your intranet to your public Web site or to other relevant sites.
Draw a road map
Although a good intranet has its own internal search engine, if your internal Internet starts getting big, you may want to consider a site map, which employees can call up at a glance to find what's where.