Effective Discussion Forums on your Intranet
Chris McGrath of One Intranets has a nice set of 6 Steps to Effective Discussion Forums on your Intranet, which I find fairly interesting. He's got more details in the full entry, so I'm not giving away the store here.
- Attach a forum to every page.
- Provide an aggregated, prioritized view of discussions.
- Integrate forums with the company directory.
- Strip the interface to the basics.
- Signal participants when a post is made.
- Engage your organization's thought leaders.
As I read through the article, it's clear these ideas are influenced by the current thinking around social software. And they apply outside the intranet too.
The other thought I had was whether in-house forums work at all, unless you are a very tech-centric company. Many companies have the capability, but they certainly don't integrate forums the way McGrath suggests. Of course, maybe this is why most of that capability goes underutilized.
This article was linked by Column Two, who also has a recent piece on When intranet discussion forums work.
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The other thought I had was whether in-house forums work at all, unless you are a very tech-centric company.
My client is a major oil exploration and production company and they have roled out a comprehensive discussion forum in their intranet.But your point makes sense - these are drilling engineers asked to take a webpage and contribute information.Most of the communities within the forum have latest posts dating back to 2005 (probably the time this was ruled out).Unless and until you efectively force-feed the forum and maintain the interest,the information inflow is going to die out sometime or the other.
Whats the solution?Even iam working on the same ;)