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1. Badly written content wastes time
2. Badly organized content wastes time
3. Too much content wastes time
4. Time is money
5. Wasting time is wasting money

Is your intranet a total mess? Can anyone publish anything they want? Is it becoming increasing difficult to quickly find quality content? Why do you have an intranet? Surely, your intranet should not be an exercise in wasting time at work. Your competitors will be very pleased.

You spend time searching for a document. You finally find it. It's badly laid out, so it's hard to read. It's badly written and way too long. Halfway through it you give up. It's just too confusing and verbose. You have learned nothing.

Organizations are producing vast quantities of spam content. This content wastes time and produces no benefit. Why do organizations do this? An organization does not deliberately set out to undermine itself. It does not deliberately set out to annoy and lose customers.

There are reasons. It's hard work to write 500 words that are simple, clear and short. It's much easier to write 5,000 words of waffle. It's hard to organize and layout content in a professional manner. It's much easier to dump it on an intranet and hope that technology will magically organize it.

Bad content is worse than no content. Bad content wastes time. In a time-starved world, wasting the time of customers or staff has serious consequences. Bad content is like a weed. It smothers good content.

A major technology company has discovered that 30 percent of the content on its public website has never, ever been accessed. Its website would be so much better—so much simpler and clearer—if that 30 percent wasn't there.

Here are some predictions:

• Organizations are going to start telling staff to send fewer emails. 'John, you're sending 100 emails a day. Next year I want you to send 50.'
• Organizations are going to set word limits for content. 'I want 500 words on this. Not a word more.'
• Organizations are going to learn to say no. 'Peter, I can't publish this. The message isn't clear. The language is way too complex. Half of what you've written is not necessary.'

Publishing poor quality, badly organized content is a form of spamming. Today, the effective manager must know how to manage content. That means thinking like an editor. For an editor, knowing what not to publish is as important as knowing what to publish.

Gerry McGovern

 

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