The credibility of any intranet is dependent on content. Content that is created, published and maintained by many different people across the organisation.

This frees up the intranet team to focus on the big picture, but they still have a key role in teaching staff on how to deliver effective content.

Depending on the skills of the authors within the organisation, intranet teams may conduct training in:

• writing for the web
• the publishing process
• how to layout pages
• governance of the intranet

The intranet team may also run a community of practice, have specific sites for author support and provide ongoing ad-hoc support. Many of these options are discussed in an earlier article How to empower authors. But another way to support authors is with a drop-in centre.

A drop-in centre is regular forum for authors to seek advice without interrupting the intranet team or making an appointment.

The informal atmosphere makes learning easy, especially for those whose authoring responsibilities only form a small part of their role.

(June article by Catherine Grenfell, read the full article.)