Intranet Content Strategy: Build an Effective Content Plan

An intranet is only as good as its content. A successful intranet has content that keeps employees informed and supports productivity by helping employees get things done. But creating and then maintaining high-value intranet content over time doesn't happen by accident. You need an intranet content strategy and an effective content plan to determine the type of content that should be on the intranet and to define the content management processes and associated roles that ensure intranet content is relevant and up to date. And then stays that way.

An effective intranet content plan improves employee engagement, supports your internal communications strategy, increases workplace productivity, and even supports the adoption of other digital workplace solutions by determining which content goes where. But it is essential to get your intranet content strategy right. It must be based on an understanding of employees' information needs and cover the right elements.

Why an Intranet Must Have an Effective Content Plan

Consider what happens when an intranet does not have a well-structured content plan.

Content is added inconsistently into different areas by different people. There's too much content or too little. Items end up in strange places. Internal communications become a free-for-all. Some content goes out of date quickly. One team publishes reams and reams of AI-generated content that is of no interest to anybody. The myriads of eccentric formats and layouts are as confusing as fudge. You get the picture.

An unsuccessful intranet includes content that has little value, might be out of date or inaccurate, and dominates search with irrelevant items, making items impossible to find. When content doesn't work, then intranet adoption and value will start to decline.

That's where the content strategy or content plan comes in. Considering the criticality of intranet content and that most publishing is devolved across a community of contributors, you need a plan to ensure that the right content is added to meet your intranet and comms strategy, and also to ensure it is managed and kept up to date.

The content strategy provides all the details that you need to ensure content on your intranet is successful, purposeful, and has sustainable value to drive employee engagement and support workplace productivity. It covers the what, the when, the why, the who, and the how so that everybody knows:

  • The type of intranet content they need to focus on.
  • The content standards that need to be met.
  • The processes that need to be followed.

What are the benefits of an effective content strategy?

  • Improved communication: A content strategy often complements or is part of an internal communications strategy. A content strategy will help to optimise, standardise and drive communications and messaging so it has impact and ultimately achieves its goals.
  • Drive knowledge sharing: A content strategy not only supports comms-related content but also reference and knowledge content that can support effective knowledge sharing across the organisation.
  • Increased productivity: "How to" and procedural content on your intranet helps employees to complete tasks and get things done as part of wider user journeys. This kind of instructional content also supports employee self-service, all ultimately driving efficiency and increasing productivity.
  • Establish one source of truth: A content strategy will help to avoid duplicate, contradictory and out-of-date content, by establishing "one source of truth" especially for critical corporate content such as policies. When the intranet is the "one source of truth" it also helps to drive employee trust in the content and support adoption.
  • Minimise risk: A content strategy stipulates the governance that needs to be in place to ensure content is accurate and up to date, minimising any associated risks which might arise where you had an outdated policy being used, for example. The content strategy can also minimise compliance risks and protect data privacy, by ensuring sensitive content is sent to channels with the right level of permissions. All this is important for regulated industries.
  • Drive intranet value and adoption: A content strategy helps ensures your content has some kind of purpose and therefore generates value, whether it supports efficiency, employee self-service or drives engagement. It also makes employees want to visit your intranet because it is genuinely useful, underpinning intranet adoption.
  • Supports search and findability: Poor search is a common user complaint about intranets and digital workplaces – often this is actually a content issue, with either too much irrelevant content or items that have not been optimised for findability through targeting, tagging and more. A good content strategy will help make sure your content is more findable. ‍
  • Maintains standards and consistency: Most intranets and digital workplaces have devolved content management with an army of part-time (and usually untrained) content contributors. Your content strategy will provide guidelines and guardrails to support a consistent approach to content management that will also help preserve publishing standards. ‍
  • Drives adoption of other channels: Your intranet might be your main digital communication channel, but it is not your only content channel. Your HR portal (e.g. Workday), service platform (e.g. ServiceNow), knowledge platform, Microsoft Teams and more can all house content. Your intranet content strategy will ensure there is clarity about which tools and channels should be used for which types of content to improve adoption and the user experience.

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An effective intranet content plan improves employee engagement, supports your internal communications strategy, increases workplace productivity, and even supports the adoption of other digital workplace solutions by determining which content goes where.

Getting started on an intranet content strategy

An intranet content strategy is a must-have, but not every intranet team actually has one in place. We've seen way too many intranets where either an initial intranet content strategy has fallen by the wayside, or where there was never actually one created. Invariably, these intranets are struggling with adoption.

Sometimes intranet teams don't quite know where to start with an intranet content strategy or don't have the bandwidth to produce one. It can also be hard to think objectively when you're also deep in the weeds of day-to-day operations.

You're probably expecting Spark Trajectory to suggest their content strategy services at this very moment - and you'd be right! We regularly define an intranet content strategy for large and complex organisations either as part of a wider project, or as a standalone piece of work. Defining the strategy and plan often involves discovery, either carrying out user research or analysing existing research. Need help with your intranet content strategy? Let's talk.

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What are the key components of an intranet content strategy?

There's no overarching or definitive view of what a content plan or strategy should include, but typically it might include the following elements:

Overarching objective:

An intranet content strategy should indicate what its overarching objective is, usually encapsulated in a simple, short mission or vision statement, not more than one or two sentences long. This helps establish the focus for the content strategy and also reminds stakeholders and content owners why it exists.

Guiding principles:

These are five or six main guiding principles that are at the core of the content strategy and should align with the overarching objective. These also indicate what the intranet content strategy will cover and provide more detail of the "how" rather than just the final state. For example, one guiding principle might be something along the lines of "We will ensure that the minimum amount of content is published, but with greater accountability; in particular, providing contact details at each point where it is necessary."

Channel and sites overview:

An overview of all the different channels, tools and formats where content can be posted, e.g. Intranet, Email newsletter, Viva Engage, Town Hall, Teams, ServiceNow, etc. This might also go into more detail about the different sites on your intranet. An overview for each channel or site might cover particular characteristics, what its purpose is, which content types get posted there, and who is responsible. It might also detail some of the accompanying content management processes. These points will differ across sites and channels, and this is the sort of detail that your content strategy needs to go into.

Audience segmentation:

An analysis of the different sections of the audience that you might target content to, e.g. managers, frontline workers, outsourced employees, different locations, etc. You may already work with personas that can be incorporated into your content strategy. However, a content strategy doesn't necessarily need to include detailed personas.

Results of content audit and discovery:

A content strategy is often informed by a discovery exercise that might include user research, a detailed content audit, user journey mapping, and more. Some of the findings of this research can be useful to surface in the content strategy to give context to items in the strategy and show why the plan is critical. This data may also provide the central pillar of any business plan where investment is required to actually deliver the intranet content strategy.

Overview of content types:

A content strategy should identify and detail all the different types of content that might be added to your intranet. These could include news, events, departmental landing pages, people profiles, "how to" instructional content, apps, and so on. If your content strategy is helping prepare for a new solution, then details about your content types can be input into design and the creation of templates within the intranet CMS.

Content governance / strategy for each area or content type:

There's always been a bit of an overlap between content governance and content strategy, and that's OK! Your content strategy should cover details (or reference if defined elsewhere) of any accompanying standards, rules, processes, and controls that relate to particular sites and channels, or to a particular content type. This detail is part of the important "meat and potatoes" of a good content strategy.

Publishing models:

When we produce an intranet content strategy for a client, we always include details of the publishing models and how these relate to each content type. These always go down really well with clients who appreciate the detail of the publishing process in terms of who is responsible, who will be reviewing and approving content, who is accountable, and so on.

Diagram of an intranet publishing model shown as five connected hexagons. In the center, ‘Site/content publishers – do the work (Responsible)’. Surrounding roles: ‘IT – break/fix (Supporting)’, ‘Internal communications – training and advice (Supporting)’, ‘Site/content sponsor – guarantee resources (Accountable)’, and ‘Information owner – ensures accuracy (Consulted)’.

Most intranets will have a mix of content that doesn't need to be approved by the central intranet team and content that needs to be tightly controlled, including by internal communications. So, there is likely to be two or three different publishing models.

Measurement and improvement plan:

Measurement is an important part of improving intranet content, and the details of what you are going to measure and why can be included within your content strategy.

Roadmap

Details the roadmap and steps involved in implementing the content strategy. This might well be part of your wider implementation roadmap if the project is for a new intranet.

Tips to create a successful intranet content plan

Align with your internal communications strategy

Intranets are a critical digital communication channel and at the centre of internal communications. If you have an existing internal comms strategy, then your intranet content plan should be aligned. While you're at it, the intranet content plan should also align with your knowledge management strategy too, particularly if the intranet is part of KM's plans.

Don't skip user research and discovery

Never create an intranet content plan based on assumptions. Even if you have a pretty good handle on the content needs for core groups of employees, user research and related data will help you to define the detail you need and also legitimise the approach with stakeholders.

Work out who's involved and what their role is

Intranet content management is invariably decentralised across the organisation. Intranet success relies on the community of publishers, admins, authors, and content owners. The content strategy should provide absolute clarity on what everybody's role is. You could use our old friend, the RASCI matrix, to define the detail.

Reach consensus among the stakeholders

Don't publish your intranet content strategy and sit back and relax, expecting everyone to fall in line. Work to achieve a consensus with key business stakeholders so they buy in to your intranet content strategy. They're usually the people who need to guarantee the resources for departments, functions, and locations to be able to maintain their intranet presence. In fact, their role may be specified within your content strategy.

Let your intranet content plan influence requirements if going for a new platform

An intranet content strategy can sometimes necessitate the need for particular functionality on an intranet product to support a devolved content management model and enforce content governance. If going for a new platform, then ensure your requirements align with your content strategy. (Pro-tip: SharePoint Online out of the box is not that great in supporting effective content governance.)

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There's always been a bit of an overlap between content governance and content strategy, and that's OK!