When someone says they don’t create content, does it leave you feeling like this?
Let’s be honest, it really only comes down to three things:
- No time
- Don’t know how
- Don’t want to
These are legitimate things we have probably all heard when encouraging people to create Knowledge Base content. With that said, I have less of the Don’t want to, because no one really wants to admit that. But once you’ve removed the time obstacle, or the don’t know how obstacle, that’s all you are left with. We will talk about some ways to overcome these issues.
Solving the "I don't have time to create content" issue
We make up the appearance of time when we dread something, right? That’s why all the things we procrastinate just grow into bigger monsters, and seldom get done.
I had heard from some teams that they never had any time to create articles. Don’t get me wrong, I know how slammed and busy they are, helping our customers. I knew we couldn’t give them more time, but we could give them the illusion of time, and show them that content creation doesn’t take days upon days for a 10-step article, unless of course, additional research is required.
Be a part of the team
I invited myself to the last half of a team meeting, in a team where the managers were really supportive of content creation. They saw it as a way to help their team have more time, by not recreating the wheel of 4 different people working on the same problem. If the first person had documented it, they saw the value of the time saved.
Have management show their support
With management on board, I reached out to the team lead, who provided me a couple incidents we could go through in the working session. I relied on the team lead for the technical stuff, and to call on people whom he knew would know the answer.
Show them how easy it is by demoing a real use case
Within 45 minutes we had created an article, with total team collaboration, by walking through the steps of the solution proposed, or the steps provided to the customer by the support engineer. Around the room, lightbulbs went off in heads knowing that it no longer took days to create articles.
Other ways to give people more time:
- Take notes about the issue as soon as it has happened, getting down the most important details most likely forgotten in a day or two.
- Document the article in the moment, or after a solution proposed incident, cuts down on the “dread time,” as well as the creation time.
Solving the "I don't know how to create a Knowledge article" issue
Don’t we wish people would just be honest and tell us this at the beginning? That’s a little harder, and usually it involves some kind of excuse. But if you are lucky enough for someone to be this honest with you, or its something you can surmise on your own, this is an easy fix. If someone (or a group of someones) tells you they don’t know how to create an article, sit down with them and show them.
Show them how easy it is
For example, however they are supposed to be creating content, start there, and show them how easy it is. That way you can answer questions as they come up. Seeing you walk through it makes it more accessible to them than to do it on their own the first time.
Partner up
Something else to keep in mind is how some people create content. I had a Support engineer tell me he wasn’t a good writer, and that he liked to send his clients videos so they could watch him do it. Have a wordsmith on your team? Partner them up with a video maker to create the steps and feature the video or images, and in the process, meet the needs of two different kinds of learners.
Solving the "I don't want to create content" issue
These are the toughest to solve, if there’s not a reason such as time or skills. These folks may just not want to create content at all. Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do about that. The more you try to make them, the more they might push. However, all is not lost.
If you have tried everything else, and they are still not creating content, when the content fever has caught on and is sweeping through teams, you might notice a difference. When they begin to see themselves as standalones, or swept up by the rest of their team who is creating content, there’s a good chance that the real reason will come out, or they will do it so as not to be left out.
