A knowledge base is a specialized tool or software that helps create, maintain and deliver information. Consider that you have purchased the best knowledge base software for your organization with a range of flexible tools to make knowledge sharing effective and seamless.
The next step would be to populate or build the knowledge base. But, wait a minute. It isn’t as straightforward as it looks. You can’t just feed a bunch of pre-written articles or manuals into it. Your knowledge base should tick certain checkboxes for it to become effective.
Let us walk through some tips you must consider when building your knowledge base.
The first and the most important tip for building your knowledge base would be to get all the content together in one place. And it doesn’t have to come from just one department.
It should come from IT, Marketing, Human Resources, and every other department – with their set of observations, views, and suggestions. After all, every team should be able to contribute to the knowledge base.
Your knowledge base should be consistent in fonts, colors, images, formatting, sizes, and other visual formatting aspects.
A style guide defines these aspects of the knowledge base, and everyone who works on the knowledge base will adhere to it. A style guide works as the master tool to build the knowledge base.
Just like the style guide ensures consistent visual representation, setting the tone will ensure a consistent way of addressing the users and writing articles in the knowledge base.
It is crucial to understand and determine how your organization talks. It shouldn’t be so that one part of the knowledge base has an extra-friendly, casual tone while the other has a serious, formal tone. Maintaining consistency is crucial.
After your knowledge base is up and running, you need to ensure it is straightforward to use and easy to navigate.
Contributors should not feel technically challenged when uploading data. They should be able to use speed templates to upload their data.
Ensure the knowledge base’s content is well-categorized, labeled, and searchable. Maintain the knowledge base’s ease of usage for best results. You must possess the right set of tools to manage and host your knowledge base seamlessly at all times.
It is crucial to know which person is responsible if something needs to be added, deleted, or modified in the knowledge base. Identify a bunch of people who will approve the content that goes LIVE.
No bottleneck or delay should be caused by authorizing a single person for all the approvals. Delegate this responsibility to a bunch of people, preferably from different departments. Similarly, it would be great to set up gatekeepers who can act as per requirement when any information needs to be added, dropped, or modified in the knowledge base.
Just putting out content isn’t the end of building a knowledge base. It is an iterative process. Once you put out a lot of content, you need to see how it impacts knowledge sharing and management in the organization.
With the help of analytics, you can gain insight into how people use the uploaded content. Encourage them to leave comments, reviews, feedback, and ratings. The marketing team must check on these statistics and feedback to consistently improve and update the knowledge base’s content.
A good knowledge base article enables the customers to help themselves. We’ve put together a guide to help you create articles that are useful and engaging.
Writing a knowledge base article is slightly different from writing a regular article. Knowledge base articles have to be written from the viewpoint that a complete beginner will be reading your articles to perform a specific task or solve a particular query.
Listed below are nine tips you can use to write knowledge base articles.
Start with creating a simple template that can be used to write every article in the knowledge base. Your template must consist of the below-mentioned sections.
Always assume that the reader is a complete beginner. Don’t use advanced, technical, or industry-related terminologies in the article. Instead of jargon, use simpler words that are easy to understand.
Overdoing the formatting can make your article difficult to read. Keep your knowledge base article’s formatting simple and as scannable as possible. Use the most basic formatting tools: bold and italics, to give more dimension to your article. Don’t underline the words unless they contain a link.
A lengthy paragraph containing ten lines of explanation will only confuse the readers. Write a precise, to-the-point explanation that your readers can grasp quickly. Keep your paragraphs short and straightforward as compared to writing pages of text.
Structure information with bullet points, lists, and other formatting options. This way, the article becomes more readable and easier to follow.
Here are some tips that can be used to structure the article well.
Link your resources wherever possible so that your readers don’t need to search elsewhere for more information about a particular term or line.
Visual media supports the content of the article and keeps the readers engaged. Here are some types of visual media you can use in the articles.
Always remember that visuals shouldn’t be overdone. It should work in conjunction with the text and not against it. It cannot replace the text, but it should work with it to make the article easily readable and understandable for the readers.
Using correct spelling and grammar is non-negotiable. Your article should be short, helpful, and error-free.
Keep an eye on the customer queries concerning the article and see how you can enrich the article to address those queries. It is equally important to update the article according to the new software updates or newly released product versions.
Today, information has become a crucial part of our lives, and with the internet boom, everyone wants easy access to the required information.
While information can be safely stored within the minds of your employees, office lockers, and files, how accessible is it to your average customer?
It is important to break open the locks of inaccessible information and create doors that ease access to vital information. With a knowledge base like PHPKB, you can never go wrong. It is the best-dedicated knowledge base that allows seamless integration, multi-lingual support, and flexibility to build your knowledge base quickly. You can buy a PHPKB plan that suits your requirements or try a FREE demo right here.
Article ID: 289
Created: March 24, 2022
Last Updated: April 25, 2022
Author: Vinita [vinita@phpkb.com]
Online URL: https://www.phpkb.com/kb/article/6-tips-for-building-a-knowledge-base-and-writing-knowledge-base-articles-289.html