However, you can utilize some best practices to ensure high quality knowledge-based content with uniform guidelines. Here are 6 to get you started.
Determine Your Authors
First you will want to delegate the knowledge-based content writing tasks. Unless you are hiring a team of professional writers, you may have only a few people raise their hand for the job. Make it a high priority and communicate with them regularly. You may want to form teams of subject matter experts (SMEs), or you may rotate writing responsibilities among your staff.
Establish Guidelines for Quality Knowledge-Based Content
Your articles must be clear, concise, and communicate valuable information. If your customers cannot find answers to their issues quickly, they will resort to filing a help ticket.
Here are some general standards to developing guidelines:
- Create a template for your articles. A well-designed template makes it easier for authors to create content. In addition, the articles across the knowledge base will have the same flow of data. This ensures consistency from the beginning. You can follow specific templates, such as PERC, which is problem, environment, resolution, cause. Or you may try directions in numbered steps and lists in bullets. These are examples, or you may create your own.
- Keep articles brief and divide them into appropriate sections. Your customers should be able to scan quickly for the answer to their issue. Too much information can easily overwhelm users in one article. For longer articles, you can break the content into sections and use page navigation so users can jump to the right place.
- Use concise, action-based titles. An articles needs to be clearly titled to indicate the task or action that it documents. Vague, overly generalized titles won’t convey the message clearly.
- Use numbered and bulleted lists. Listed steps and items are far easier to scan and follow when delineated in a numbered or bulleted list. Use bullet points for lists with no particular order, and use numbered lists when actions must be followed in order.
- Define terminology and industry jargon. Ensure that industry terminology is defined and avoid jargon. If you include industry jargon, include an explanation. You may also create a glossary that delineates key terms for your business and industry sector.
- Link articles for easier navigation and to show relationships. Linked articles help customers and users find the right data for resolution to their issues. They might even find answers to other questions as well. If you move the article or change the title later, ensure the links remain valid.
Lastly, be sure to have the article reviewed and edited prior to publishing. You want knowledge-based content that is consistent, error-free, and trustworthy.
