Typical Intranet Content For Planning and Design

You might have heard the adage: “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” This couldn’t be more true for intranets. No matter what comes along: Web 2.0, social, Gov 2.0, etc., the core content you find on intranets is usually within a very similar range.

Some clients know exactly what they want to do from a content perspective, and sometimes the client looks at us and says, “can you tell us what to do?”  No matter which end your client is on, it’s a good idea to ensure they’ve thought about all the possible types of content that could be included in their information architecture and content strategy. I’ve put together a list of all the top-level types of content that you can use to help your clients brainstorm about their content publishing needs.

Each section includes examples of how this may be applied. For instance, a “type” of corporate news could be news related to new hires and so on. Please let me know if there are any gaps.

• Departmentally-based information (IT help center, HR onboarding, Legal polices)
• Corporate news (internal news, external news, new hires/people news, intranet updates)
• Events (internal events, external events; can include information on publishing about the events as well as planning for the events)
• Forms, policies, procedures (forms library, IT policies)
• Subsidiary/business unit based content (the organization might also have a divisional breakdown)
• External Goods/Services (sold to clients)
• Internal Goods/Services (provided for the organization’s benefit)
• Geographic content (US headquarters, Rwanda office)
• Tasked-based content (How do I?, Were do I find?)
• Executive/Leadership content (Meet the CEO, Board of Directors)
• Reporting content (project-based, company-wide)
• Content about the organization (offices, history)
• Records center/records management (content that needs stringent auditing/retention)
• Blogs (CIO blog, thought leadership)
• Company directories (staff directory, people search)
• Training (technology training, process training)
• Marketing and Branding (messaging information, style/branding guides)
• Contractual content (writing contracts, contract repositories)
• Best practices (can be policies and also examples of good work)
• Social content (company volleyball, social events, charities)
• Communities/Collaboration
  • Community of interest (around specific topics)
  • Community of practice (for practitioners)
  • Project based collaboration (sites related to delivery)
  • Pure ad-hoc collaboration (proposal generation, task tracking)
• My sites
  • Online social content (newsfeeds)
  • Event based updates (document updated, person followed x)
  • Personal content (“my documents”)
• Content related to intranet upkeep (UX team, administrator how to/reference materials)
• ECM (eDiscovery)
• Meeting content (prep for meetings, meeting materials)