Built for internal communication, intranets don’t serve the traditional content marketing goals of educating customers and prospects. But they do function as portals to valuable tools and information that employees need to be productive. So in a very real way, intranets are designed to share useful, informative content — just like the best B2C and B2B content marketing sites do.

Thinking about intranet content

Intranets are unique providers of content. Although the audience is captive, the content still needs to engage the readers so the site becomes a useful and vibrant center of a company’s internal community.

To create content that engages employees and helps them feel like vital and valued members of your team, here are a few guidelines to consider:

• Focus on providing useful documents and tools. Intranets serve as repositories for a lot of internal data, and no one wants to spend time searching for the right form or template they need to do their job. Organize documents and tools into useful, intuitive categories that will make searches easier by job function, geographic location, most frequently used, etc.
• Format the content like you will be using it to sell to your customers. Employees will want to spend more time on your intranet if the content there is interesting or fun to use. Consider incorporating some of the same design ideas that your public-facing internet page or popular consumer products websites use, such as graphics, widgets, or blogs.
• Provide easy ways for employees to respond to and interact with each other. As consumers of social media in their personal lives, employees will likely be familiar with activities like commenting on blog or news posts, liking or voting on content, and emailing or sharing interesting articles. Adding these types of functionality to your intranet will give your employees more ways to become engaged in your corporate community.
• Don’t forget the fun. Intranets are usually created for serious business purposes. But remember that the employees using it are the very same people who play video games, interact with social media sites, and watch videos or listen to podcasts in their free time. Adding an element of fun on an intranet doesn’t necessarily mean posting a game that might distract from work, but it could certainly include some not-so-serious content like a poll on non-business topics, a quote of the day, employees’ favorite recipes, or even a buy-sell page to help employees trade their season tickets more easily.
• Mobile is the new black. Employees are not always in the office, so creating a mobile version of your intranet site can help ensure that they always have access to the tools and information they need no matter where they are doing their work — at an off-site meeting, a home office, or even another branch of your company.

Is your intranet doing it right?

As a rule, internal communications are proprietary. So it isn’t easy to find examples of how other companies are creating and managing their intranet communications. But next time you are looking to improve your company’s current intranet — or to build a new internal site — try using these questions to help guide your efforts:

Content:

Authorship

• Who creates the content? The human resources or communications department? An internal team? External consultants? Are authors identified for individual pieces of content?
• Is content marked with date or time stamps, so users can tell how current it is?
• Does the site include links to source materials or other helpful resources?
• Is content curated effectively, with the best and most recent information made available most easily?

Organization

• How is content organized — by job function, geography, etc.?
• Is your organization scheme intuitive, based on how users are most likely to search according to their specific job needs?
• What will be the balance between content designed for anyone in the company (such as HR forms or staff directories) and content designed for specific groups (such as a form for a single business unit or a template for senior managers)?

Content types

• Does the content include the basic tools employees need — such as HR forms, templates, or reference materials like articles or white papers?
• Is necessary information on employees posted — like rosters or organization charts, staff news, or updates on your management team?
• Is information about your customers available — such as customer feedback, links to recorded customer service calls, or feeds from your social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter?
• Do you have a news feed? Is it about your company, specifically, or your industry as a whole? Is the source internal or external?
• Are there different types of information available, such as videos and podcasts or interactive content, as well as text-based content like articles, blog posts, and reports?

User experience:

• Does your intranet site have its own search engine? How does it present results? Is the navigation intuitive and consistent from page to page?
• Is the site architecture consistent (i.e., does clicking a link on the navigation bar take you to the same level page? Does the text make it clear if you are linking outside the site or about to download a file)?
• Are there broken links or files that do not download properly?
• Is it easy to get help or provide feedback about the site itself?

Format/Layout:

• How closely does the design of your intranet site align with your company’s external brand presence?
• Is the layout of the site and all its content easy to read and navigate?
• Does the design use a mix of text, graphics, video, and audio content?

Social media:

• Are you using internal blogs? Who writes them, and can users comment or submit posts?
• If your company has external presence on social media sites like YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook, have you set up feeds to pull this information onto your intranet site?

Conclusion

Intranets shouldn’t be thought of as just the poor second cousin of your company’s public-facing websites. As valuable tools that educate and inform your employees, the ultimate goal of an intranet site is to help them be as productive as possible. What do you think makes the best content for an intranet? What are your thoughts about how companies can improve employee engagement through the content they offer?

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Ostensibly, this is a good thing. After all, it suggests that our industry has outgrown its “cottage” status and moved into the big house. But in our rush to “be measured like everyone else,” content marketers are in danger of shortchanging their full value to the organization.

Let’s look at four hidden benefits of content marketing that will never show up on the CMO’s dashboard but can bring immense value to the company and its internal relationships.

Content can give you a recruiting edge

Every quarter, I present Eloqua’s content marketing strategy to recent hires. Without fail, some of these new employees pull me aside to say that our content is what tilted their decision in the company’s favor.

In a competitive industry, recruiting top-caliber talent is a priority of the highest order. In fact, according to venture capitalist (and content marketer extraordinaire) Fred Wilson, recruiting top talent is one of only three priorities for every CEO. Yet despite the importance of recruiting, it would be easy to overlook the impact an engaging content marketing program can have on this business-critical priority.

Here’s the takeaway: Partner with your HR department. When your company on-boards staff, have your recruiter ask new hires to share the reasons why they joined, and share this information with your internal teams. The ability to prove your content efforts have impacted recruiting will help make you — and your content efforts — indispensible to your organization.

Content can help boost company morale

Back when I worked at a PR firm, I recall challenging a client who wanted us to help his company secure coverage in a publication that didn’t necessarily influence its buyers. When I pushed back on the priority, the CEO told me, “The article isn’t for our customers. It’s for our staff. The place lights up when we get covered in the press… and I know a lot of our workers read this magazine.” I’ve never forgotten that lesson, and content marketing can help accomplish this very same goal.

When you publish a popular asset, the cheering it receives on the social web can validate the efforts of the entire company. Your victory lap is everyone’s victory lap,  so make sure you “market” the popularity of your content to your colleagues — not to boast personally, but rather to remind them that as crowded as the social web is, your company managed to stand out.

Content opens up lines of communication

Remarkable content doesn’t just get customers and prospects talking; it also gets your internal clients buzzing. It gives colleagues something to share with one another, something to debate, or something to challenge. It opens doors, rings phones, and makes heads gopher over cubicle walls. It also provides you with an opportunity to recruit advocates and participants.

When your colleagues engage with your content, it creates an opportunity to invite them to contribute to future programs. Because content marketing sits between so many different organizational functions, it is a surprisingly political role. Be sure to marshal your supporters when you have their attention.

Content fosters trust

In a recent FastCompany article, marketing leader Don Peppers convincingly argues that the key to competitive advantage is “being proactively trustworthy.” Creating content that is so valuable that people would pay for it,  yet you give it away for free, is a reliable way to earn the public’s trust. This is precisely why the value transfer in content marketing should be from institution to individual, which is an upside-down model for traditional marketers. In other words, when trust is the goal, companies should strive to sell by not selling.

None of this is to suggest that content marketers shouldn’t aspire to be measured — of course we should. But we also need to find ways to highlight the value we provide — especially if there’s no key performance indicator (KPI) attached to it.

It takes a village to raise a content marketing strategy (that’s the saying, right?). Content marketing is only as effective as the internal community that supports it, and that community is bigger than just the marketing department. The most valuable marketing content often lives outside the marketing department, in the hands of content contributors and subject matter experts.

Creating and sustaining quality marketing content within your organization requires strong internal relationships; these relationships inform content requirements and customers’ needs while providing valuable sources of content.

Communication goals: Breaking down the silos

So what gets in the way of internal relationships and great content marketing? Politics. Organizations have many internal stakeholders — such as product developers, customer service representatives, business managers, and creative directors — with many different objectives. With competing priorities and different points of view, how can organizations collectively create content that supports marketing? How do we tell a consistent story through countless content sources and delivery methods?

To ensure content educates and informs, rather than confuses or misleads, break down the silos and get everyone on the same page. This means you need to understand your internal stakeholders as well as you understand your customers.

The good news is there’s common ground. All these seemingly competing priorities are supporting the same business objectives — just like your content marketing program. (Well, hopefully.)

Invite internal stakeholders to join the party. Work with them to define their communication goals so they understand how the content they inform or create supports their work along with larger business objectives. Stakeholders will step out on the dance floor if the beat is something they can move to.

Assign ownership: Getting stakeholders involved

Just as you need to work with your customers, you need to work with your internal stakeholders. Involve them in the process. The more stakeholders can take ownership in the process, the more invested they will be in its success.

From my experience, marketing teams are easily frustrated by the lack of participation from stakeholders. I’ve been there. “Why is the product manager’s contact information out of date?” “When was the last time the customer service team updated their blog?” However, I’ve found these problems are not always due to a lack of interest but rather a lack of guidance.

Most people in your organization may not think of themselves as publishers or know what it means to be one. But if they’re informing, creating, editing, approving, or sharing content, they are publishers and need to think differently. It’s our job as content professionals to educate stakeholders and enable collaboration. As Erin Kissane recommends in The Elements of Content Strategy, you can start by introducing internal stakeholders to common publishing tools and processes, such as editorial workflows, editorial calendars, and “content that is custom-tuned for specific channels and audiences.”

Some stakeholders will readily welcome being part of the publishing process, while others will require coaxing. You may need to buy the first cup of coffee, but it’s worth the $1.50.

Education: Creating a content marketing culture

Though most people don’t see themselves as publishers, stakeholders at every level of an organization are content creators. Photos, videos, white papers, blogs, tweets — it’s all content that contributes to your brand’s story and shapes customer perception. But not all internal stakeholders understand their audience and communication goals, which is vital knowledge if they are going to create or contribute to content that is valuable and purposeful.

Guide your brand. To help content contributors better understand their audience and to communicate clearly, include brand messaging and communication goals in your editorial style guides. Offer practical examples of how to convey your brand through content. The folks at MailChimp — a company well known for its casual, playful brand — accomplish this through a working voice and tone style guide. They also prove editorial style can be as fun to use as it is to read.

Build a content network for sharing and learning. Content marketing is a long-term commitment. Constantly publishing great content is tough, but you can find support in a content network. This effort starts by inviting internal stakeholders to share ideas and expertise. Create a contact list for your network of content contributors and partners. Encourage collaboration through regular meetings or use an internal wiki to share ideas. Who knows? You might just find a great content idea (or someone new to join your Friday night poker game).

Demonstrate the value of content. It’s important to communicate the relevance of your content marketing program to your internal stakeholders. They likely already know that content can attract, engage, and retain customers, which is great, but they should also know the specifics of how it achieves these goals. Is its main purpose to improve communication? Support customer service? Enhance brand awareness? Whatever the goals are for your content marketing program, you need to communicate — and demonstrate — them in order to foster true understanding of content marketing throughout your organization.

To demonstrate your content’s value, start by identifying relevant metrics that convey how content supports your business’s communication goals. For example, if your organization wants to be seen as dedicated to community building, track metrics of how frequently members of the target audience comment on blog posts and socialize your organization’s content on Twitter or on the company’s or employees’ own blogs.

It’s easier to gain internal stakeholder support when you foster an organizational culture that understands the value of its content, and can see evidence that it is working. Who knows? With clear results on the table, maybe a colleague will buy you the next cup of coffee!

Putting relationships to work

With strong internal stakeholder relationships and a content strategy, a content marketing program has the foundation it needs for success.

With better collaboration, you can:

• Align content creation with business objectives and communication goals
• Ensure consistent voice, tone, and brand messaging across content delivery channels and among diverse subject matter experts
• Discover opportunities for repurposing shared content in order to meet new needs for customers and your business
• Create listening posts within your content network to better understand customers’ needs and pain points
• Establish guidelines and best practices, including those for editorial, SEO, social media, content formats, and delivery methods
• Share relevant sources of content to support marketing initiatives
• Identify subject experts to respond to or inform responses to content feedback
• Share success metrics — including those for business, usability, and SEO — to improve your content marketing program

How do you manage internal relationships in your content marketing program? How do these relationships benefit your content and customers? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this subject in the comments.