The Intranet's New Clothes

Yesterday I attended an IABC luncheon in downtown Boston. The Yankee chapter of IABC is a great organization and very committed to providing forums for members, lapsed members (that's me!) and future members to come together and share thoughts, ideas, strategies and tactics.

A lot of the people I talked to work in internal communications. I asked about the use of social media in their daily work and the primary answer is still: "Well...we've got an intranet". Intranets are great but they offer so much more beyond being a repository of company information.

Here's what companies should consider for their intranets in 2007 (if they haven't done so already):

• Newsfeeds: allow your employees to customize their company news by using RSS
• YouToo can do what YouTube does: incorporate video in your intranet. This doesn't mean that every employee should be able to publish his or her own amateur video on the company site. Use semi-professional video to communicate news on your intranet as it reaches more employees than pure text.
• The same is true for Vodcasts or Podcasts which proof to be a valuable alternative to announcing company news such as a new benefits program, the opening of a new facility or an upcoming tradeshow the company exhibits at.
  
• Consider a blog for internal communications especially if you work in an environment where an external blog faces all kinds of regulatory and legal hurdles that you can't get past. One of the attendees yesterday suggested an Editor's Blog to solicit ideas and content for the employee newsletter. What a great idea!
• If you've got employees in various locations collaborating on writing a publication, a series of white papers or other forms of content, consider offering a wiki as part of the Intranet.
• Multi-cultural global corporations can also benefit from their own social networking component. Intranets usually have an employee directory, often with pictures, and sometimes with an attached skill profile. Why not allow all company experts on a certain topic - no matter where they are located - to form their own little community.
  

If you want to know what makes an intranet a great intranet, check out Jacob Nielsen's Best Intranets of 2007.