When did content migration – or “cleanse” as one client calls it – go to the top of the list of important intranet topics?
We just signed a contract for such work and I’ve got no fewer than three more in process. Everyone has suddenly got religion about fixing their intranet content.
We’ve been helping clients with this for a while now and I see some consistencies:
- Most clients can’t tell me how many different sites make up their intranet or portal, much less how many documents
- Most clients have had absolutely no governance controls that dictate periodic reviews of content by content owners
- Most clients have content that is a decade old and unvisited for at least the past 18 months
There are several things driving the interest in content migration:
- Many, many, many companies are in the process of moving to a different platform – they don’t want to simply move the junk over
- There’s a new acceptance of the fact that poorly crafted content damages usability, readability and comprehension – the research bears this out and people are finally listening
- Employees are fatigued and overwhelmed with the shear volume of content
- Bad content is causing bad business decisions
So, what to do? In this post I want to give you a quick shot of ideas. I’m going to offer more detail in my next couple of posts. But first, here are some things you can do right away to ensure better content and start down the path of virtuous content migration.
- Get the tools you need to inventory your sites and content – if you don’t know what you have, how can you help your content owners fix it?
- Use these tools to identify content that has been unvisited and untouched for the past 18 months and archive all of it – note I said “archive” because your document record management schedule may not allow you to actually delete it, but delete what you can and archive the rest
- Make the content owner role part of people’s job description and performance management plan – a volunteer crew won’t result in great content
- Provide the right tools and training for those creating content, remembering that most of them are  not professional communicators but can learn
Want some more information on the topic of content migration? Here are two live opportunities to learn more:
- Melcrum’s SharePoint: Connecting Employees to Drive Productivity and Increase Collaboration – a three-day workshop that includes content migration and my crash course on writing killer intranet content, scheduled for February, June and November
- IABC’s World Conference – I’ll bring an abbreviated version of my content migration module to this June Tuesday afternoon session.
Recent Comments