Summary


Unlike the earliest days of intranet development, when intranets were left to succeed or fail basically on their own, today's corporate intranets often demand much more aggressive marketing efforts to promote widespread acceptance, let alone basic use. As we've discussed, this can be both a blessing and a curse. But as long as we're stuck building the intranets, it will often fall upon our shoulders to also make sure that the intranets are successful in the long run - not to mention that it's good to occasionally remind our bosses that we're busily adding value in these days of frequent and unexpected layoffs!

As you prepare to structure your assault on a marketing plan to promote your intranet to your coworkers, there are three key points to remember:

  • Identify challenges, big and small: Early on, it's critical to identify the myriad challenges that will face your intranet marketing efforts - everything from a funky user-interface to a disinterested management team. Understanding the challenges that face your intranet will not only help you craft better short- and long-term marketing plans, but will also help you to focus your (always) limited resources on those challenges that are not so terribly daunting or entrenched as to be outside the reach of even the savviest marketing efforts.

  • Map out your core marketing strategy: With your challenges in mind, begin to craft a marketing strategy that brings to bear all the "best practices" and other marketing techniques likely to negate such challenges and lay a foundation for a successful intranet property. Anything is fair game here, and includes the whole gambit of marketing tips and tactics - launch parties (big or small), user training, offline marketing through newsletters and corporate events, even co-opting employees early in the process to serve as intranet ambassadors who'll reach out to other employees as part of a grassroots marketing effort - nothing is off-limits that will help to ensure the successful launch and widespread acceptance of the intranet among your coworkers.

  • Work to keep users and management interested over the long term: But it's not enough to launch the intranet and then hit the beach. A successful intranet is a living, breathing entity, and requires ongoing support not only to maintain the intranet as it exists in its initial form, but also to identify opportunities for growth and to secure the support and sponsorship from the appropriate stakeholders (or better yet, from the bean-counters with check-signing authority) in both management and from among the general worker pool.

    Whether you opt to host FutureScape Briefings or distribute printed factsheets to keep executives apprised of the intranet's progress and potential, it's paramount that the executives be targeted in addition to courting the rank-and-file employees through ongoing focus groups, questionnaires, usability testing, etc.

By applying the best marketing practices that we've detailed throughout this chapter, you'll enjoy far greater success in your initial efforts to deploy a new intranet property within your corporation, be more effective in soliciting ongoing feedback from employees throughout all levels of your organization for the ongoing operation of your intranet, and will become exceedingly adept at securing the support from both management and workers required to continually evolve your intranet as your corporate needs change over time.




Practical Intranet Development
Practical Intranet Development
ISBN: 190415123X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 124

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