Intranet Basics:

• What is an Intranet?
• Potential Intranet Costs
• Intranet Applications
• External Hosted Intranets
• Hosted Intranet Benefits
• Open Source Intranets
• Intranet Outsourcing
• Intranet Design Errors
• Administration Errors

Intranet Advanced:

• Securing Your Intranet
• Using Multiple Servers
• The Client-Server Model
• Promoting Your Intranet
• What is Intranet 2.0?
• Standardized Intranets

Intranet Tips:

• Creative Intranet Uses
• Saving Storage Costs
• Intranet Myths Debunked
• Using RSS on an Intranet
• Open Source Add-ons
• The GTD Concept

Intranets and Google:

• About Google’s Intranet
• Using Google Mini

How to Promote Your Intranet

Intranets are for a company’s private use, so why on Earth would you ever need to promote or even market an intranet? Now this may not be a problem with smaller companies, but the larger companies are starting to come across a small problem. When a company has a staff of a few hundred employees, with new employees being signed on frequently, it may be hard to get the full staff aware that an intranet exists. And if the staff doesn’t know an intranet exists - how can you take advantage of the sheer efficiency of the intranet?

Email Promotion

Email is an excellent tool to get started in your intranet campaign. It’s always a good idea to send a welcoming email to new employees, detailing what an intranet is and what they can expect to do with it. Adding a link on the bottom of company newsletters also has worked well in the past - especially since it can be marketed to new and old employees alike.

Email promotion isn’t always perfect: sometimes a company is running email services through the very intranet they are trying to promote. If the employee isn’t aware of the intranet, they obviously wouldn’t be able to check their email to view your handy marketing techniques.

Web Browser Settings

The majority of most computers probably have the URL of Google or Yahoo! set as their homepage. However, it is often a much better idea to set the homepage to the actual intranet welcome page for your company. In this instance, anyone who accesses the internet through a web browser is required to at least be somewhat aware there is a common company resource.

To ensure a better chance that the intranet is viewed, setting can be configured so that the web browser is launched after a login. This way there is always some type of interaction with the intranet, as long as the employee comes into contact with a computer at some point in their employment.

Real-World Promotion

Not every bit of marketing needs to take place in cyberspace. Quite the contrary, as some of the more creative marketing methods exist in the real world. For instance, you may put up posters raising awareness of an intranet in employee break rooms.

Along with physical promotion through posters, some companies even go as far as to celebrate the birthday of the intranet each year. For some companies this is a little extreme and unnecessary, but it does indeed help improve employee relations and worker satisfaction as a side effect.

Lastly, company branding is another good bet that your intranet will become well known. Many companies have brandings on pens, mouse pads, staplers, t-shirts, and other small items. By placing a link to the intranet, or even a short phrase regarding the intranet, the awareness of the intranet will overall increase.

Making the Intranet “Fun,” yet Useful

Most of the marketing is done by just having a useful service. If the intranet doesn’t have anything to offer employees, they likely will not use it. The best solution for this is to create a portal for a homepage, much like Yahoo! does with their website. Have links to the most used resources, give helpful information, and give access to all resources in a quick and easy manner.

But there is no reason to skip out on fun here. We may include several aspects of MySpace, perhaps. We can support employee profiles, maybe not on the scale of MySpace, but functional enough to get the point across. Putting an “Employee of the Day” section on the intranet homepage also increases the “fun” factor; and employee relations as a result.

Other types of boredom suppressants may come in the form of a “Quote of the Day” or even message boards. The “Quote of the Day” isn’t necessarily useful, but it does help bridge the gap between employee and company personality. Message boards allow for new employees to ask questions, post comments, or generally get feedback about a number of issues. This sense of community can easily boost efficiency and employee satisfaction - and thus the word of the intranet will get around by word of mouth.

Closing Comments

Your intranet won’t be an instant success - you’ll likely need a few marketing tactics. The smaller companies in life won’t necessarily need to go to extremes, since word of mouth is stronger in smaller areas. Larger companies will see great benefit from the amount of users actually using the intranet, if just a few of these suggestions are taken to heart.

While it may not be incredibly necessary to host birthday parties for your intranet, do keep in mind that sometimes the less efficient means of marketing can have interesting side effects. If you can market your intranet and keep up company morale - then you’ve just killed two birds with one stone!

And if all else fails - and employees still don’t know what an intranet is, a mandatory meeting could serve well. Although, it probably will not come to that - depending on how well your marketing skills come to be.