By Mark Gibbs
Network World, 5/25/98

You've provided your users with editing tools and training and have turned them loose. Now comes the tricky part. You've got to pump up those users' enthusiasm about publishing and researching on your intranet.

Getting the CEO committed to the intranet will go a long way toward helping your cause. If your CEO isn't a fan, the rest of the employees may not get fired up over the intranet, either.

Get your corporate head honcho to post on the intranet messages to the troops, corporate reports and other public pronouncements. In fact, encourage your CEO to use the intranet for anything he otherwise would have committed to paper.

Once you've gotten the CEO on board, your next targets are department heads and line managers. If trying to get these folks to support the company intranet proves too difficult, you'll have to work around them.

Unless you want to be known as a corporate gorilla, you might want to take a subtle approach. The following is a list of ways to nudge intranet users while being diplomatic.

1. Hold competitions, making intranet users the judges. A good challenge would be coming up with the best departmental profile, for example. You could reward winners with a pizza party hosted by the intranet development team.

Or, if the budget allows, you might buy a few digital cameras and loan them to users for photographing their holidays, children or pets. The person with the best online gallery gets a camera.

No matter what the competition is about, remember to keep focused on the publishing of information. In other words, don't get caught up in just data and the quality and organization of the presentation.

2. Offer an online company magazine as a replacement for a paper version of the same thing. The magazine should include corporate and private announcements, classified ads, sports events - anything fit for publication, really. Also, make sure the magazine announces intranet events, such as availability of new resources and sites.

3. Encourage human resources staffers to stop answering questions over the phone about basic issues such as leave entitlement. Instead, have them refer callers to the intranet. You will have to be a little cautious, of course, as some staff members will balk at having to use a computer at all. On the other hand, HR personnel should find it easy to support this stratagem given that it will ultimately reduce their workload.

4. Make external content available on your intranet. This might include newsfeeds, competitive information (including screen captures of Web sites), mailing lists, selected newsgroups and local information. This last category can be a powerful draw if you provide mapping services, white and yellow pages and pointers to Internet content related to local interests.

5. Award a prize to the department or individual who has posted the information that is accessed most frequently each month. Note, however, that you may have to exclude some departments, such as IT and HR, from the running because of the ongoing popularity of their information.

6. Create frequently asked questions lists for addressing subjects users commonly need to discuss. Each department must contribute and maintain an FAQ that covers at least the basics of its functions and explains who's who within the department. Make sure FAQs are visible to search engines.

7. Post e-mail summaries of new content that is relevant to each department and, ideally, to individual users. But don't overload users with too-frequent bulletins. If you do, the impact will diminish.

8. If your budget allows, give individual users or workgroup teams a device such as Visioneer's Paperport, a single-page color scanner that only costs about $200. A device such as this lets users compile information for publishing much faster than if they have to request scanning from the IT group's Web design staff, for example.

Add optical character recognition and a Web publishing tool kit for an additional $50 each, and you've got a powerful way to support user publishing on the intranet.

9. Put all frequently used forms online. The forms for ordering telephone service or consumer items such as stationery are prime targets, as are more complex forms for capital requisitions.

Posting forms online will cure a number of administrative headaches. The departments dealing with the forms are likely to be your biggest supporters - they'd welcome with open arms anything that reduces paper clutter and streamlines the work.

There you have them. These nine methods of stimulating intranet use are simple to put into practice and all work by persuasion rather than force.

And, please, remember the old maxim: "Diplomacy is letting them have it your way.''

Do you have any intranet stimulants? Gibbs can be reached by sending e-mail to imcolumn@gibbs.com or leaving a message at (800) 622-1108, Ext. 7504.