Intranet Advent Day 22 – Create a community of contributors

We’re counting down to Christmas with a stocking-filler tip every day.

Just as Santa needs help from his elves, an intranet manager needs a community of contributors around them. And like the elves, those contributing to the health and usefulness of your intranet deserve a secret grotto.

And by ‘grotto’, perhaps I mean a Batcave worthy of the heroes who actively curate and maintain the intranet content. Hopefully you have dozens of CoPs on your intranet – Communities of Practices (rather than the law enforcement variety), and the major intranet contributors should have their own community too.

A contributor community might be a great thing to set-up before you launch, revamp, or re-launch your intranet – to engage and support ‘intranet advocates’ and up-skill content authors and publishers.

A contributor community should be a safe space to ask for help with the intranet system, get guidance around online communications, and even good writing.

So if you haven’t got a Batcave, create one now, but ensure you explain the purpose of the group, and then work daily to provide a reason for people to visit. Remember, communities fail when they don’t have a strong reason to exist. Managing a community is quite an investment of your time, but a strong contributor community can amplify all your efforts when it comes to overall intranet success.

Create a community of intranet contributors: http://t.co/PINEQ7FM3n #intranetadvent Support your #intranet heroes.

— ClearBox Consulting (@ClearBoxTeam) December 22, 2014

Check #intranetadvent for a fresh idea each day.