A Recipe for Sticky Content!
Building Traffic to Your Academy Hub
How appealing is your Academy Hub content, does it attract users
to revisit the Hub frequently leaving them hungry for more?
Ask yourself the following three questions.
- Is your Hub an essential part of your organisation's
infrastructure, if not why not?
- How often on average do your employees use your
Academy Hub, and setting it as the default page on their
browser when they log-in does not count?
- Honestly, could you or your organisation function in
your day to day work without your Academy Hub?
If any of the above make you question the value your Academy Hub
gives to your organisation, then you could benefit from sticky
content. Designed to be memorable, relevant, informative and
useful, this type of content will get users to come back for
more. Interested? Well, the following ideas may help you
cook up a recipe for success.
Refresh Your Content
If you expect your users to visit daily then the
content also has to change on a daily basis. Not all of it,
but enough to make a difference. This means that news and
content not only has to change but has to be seen to be
changed. Ensure your visitors get to know what’s new by
informing them on the Home Page.
| Practical Hints: add a
‘What’s New’ box on the Home Page that leads to the new
content and change it on a daily basis; E-mail
information on big changes out to the users and pull
them to the site. |
Get To Know Your Users
Not only does your content need to be refreshed often, it also
needs to be relevant. If you are not sure what your users
would find interesting or need, then ask them. By being
responsive and reflecting your user’s needs you are
demonstrating that you value their views and this will
encourage usage.
|
Practical Hints: add
questionnaires, polls and surveys that ask for new ideas
and then be sure to act on the results. |
Get Your Users To Own Their Information
Decentralise your content by having each department, function
or team take responsibility for their own part of the
Hub. This means publishing that information must be as
easy as writing an e-mail or saving a Word document. Predaptive's
CMS (Content Management Systems) can take the pain out of
managing site content allowing you to cut and paste directly
from text files, Microsoft Word or even the web.
|
Practical Hints: when
splitting a site into different areas for decentralised
content management, always look at the content from the
users' rather than the organisational perspective. Cross
departmental teams working on the same content can only
be a good thing. |
Make Your Content Easy To Access
In most cases the user interface is the last thing companies
think about when deploying a Hub; however it should
really be the first. If you want your employees to spend part
of their work day within the Academy Hub, the user interface has
to be intuitive, easy to use, visually appealing and if
possible personalised.
|
Practical Hints: profile your users. You can then make the
browsing experience a personalised one. This ensures the
banners that appear on the Home Page are of interest,
the menus that appear are important to them and the news
and resources are relevant. |
Avoid Bland Content
Remember quality is always better than quantity, so be
selective in the information posted on the site. Try not to
sensor too much content and always be truthful. Remember if
the users feel it is just a mouthpiece for the senior
management team and not a place to source factual information
(good or bad) then it won’t get used.
|
Practical Hints: remember
news is only news when it’s recent, when its dated it’s
history! News has a shelf life, always archive when news
or resources become dated. |
Channel Communication Through The Hub
Start using the Hub to distribute news and
information. Circulate e-mails with a summary and then link to
the full document on the Hub, also add links to your
e-mails that go to news articles or resource documents.
|
Practical Hints:
remember respect individuals e-mail; always circulate on
a ‘needs to know’ basis. The more e-mail (particularly
non-relevant) that individuals get, the lower the impact
will be when important information is circulated. |
Whenever Possible Measure Activity
Remember you will need to demonstrate an ROI for your Hub
and this means demonstrating usage and recording savings
whenever possible. This can range from the amount of paper
saved because many previously paper based files have been
moved online, to recording saved time (and potentially
resources) as many manual processes are automated.
|
Practical Hints: it is
important to understand that to improve your site you
will need to know where people are going and what they
are doing. Remember however to respect confidentiality
at all times. If users feel Big Brother is watching they
will avoid using the Hub. |
If the above gets the taste buds going and you would like to
know more regarding sticky content and how you could integrate
it into your organisation through an Academy Hub, then Predaptive OD Limited can
help. To find out more contact:
Lynn Joy
Tel: 01789 734333
E-Mail: lynnj@predaptive.com
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