Spring is an exciting time for gardeners. Even before warm weather sets in, gardeners must complete a set of activities that will pay off in an abundant growing season.
It’s the same with your intranet.
Maintenance tasks need to be completed daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly to keep your intranet fresh, lively, and useful.
Below are some things you can do right now to have a thriving, lush intranet.
Clean
As the snow melts, the garden is at its ugliest. Plants haven’t sprung back to from their Winter sleep. Disease and clutter that’s been hidden by snow is revealed. It’s time for Spring cleaning. And for some plants, a little bit of pruning means healthier, stronger growth.
Your intranet needs some cleaning and pruning, too. Go through folders to find and remove obsolete intranet content. Look at your intranet statistics to identify which pages never get any visits. Perhaps there’s a reason for that: nobody needs them! So why keep them in your intranet?
Another intranet task worth doing is removing duplicates of files. Look for documents that may have been archived in two different sections and photos saved in different names. This may be time consuming, but totally worth the effort. It may be a good task to delegate to summer interns.
Plant
As soon as the danger of frost has passed, it’s time to put plants in the ground to set the stage for summer blooms and harvests.
An intranet needs a constant supply of fresh, relevant content. Before you go off to your summer holiday, now is the time to “plant” intranet content that you can reap later. Some ideas:
- Tap and train new intranet authors now, to ensure a continuous flow of content throughout summer.
- Fill out your intranet editorial calendar for the next 4-6 months. Encourage your intranet’s bloggers to do the same.
- Running out of content ideas? Try rotating a monthly intranet meme. It’s a fun way to get intranet users engaged in the intranet.
- Make sure newly added intranet users have been trained adequately to access, add, comment, modify, and do other intranet-related tasks.
Harvest
Some ornamental plants begin blooming in the Spring, just as vegetables and herbs like arugula, kale, and parsley are ready to be harvested.
If you’ve done your intranet Spring cleaning and content “planting,” you should begin to see the fruits of your work before Summer arrives. Increased engagement, higher user satisfaction, and increased productivity are some of the rewards you can look forward to.
Being an intranet manager is no easy job. But if you work at it regularly and proactively, you’ll have fewer and smaller fires to put out.
What intranet maintenance tasks do you usually do this time of the year?