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Let go of an obsession with intranet content quality

I'm sitting in today on an intranet conference today, and I've now heard three different talks about improving content quality on intranets. In particular:

• developing content standards and guidelines
• industry standards and guidelines
• "inverted pyramid" writing style
• training intranet authors
• enforcing content standards

I just don't care. I've written before than not all content needs to be of equal quality. More importantly, with all the challenges involved in delivering an effective intranet, is this really where we want to be focusing our efforts?

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.

So I say: let go of this obsession! 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...

Posted by jamesr on October 26, 2005 04:24 PM
Categories: Intranets