A common question we get from new intranet managers and prospective intranet purchasers is… “How can I drive adoption on my intranet?” While there are many different methods for engaging employees on your intranet, content is key.  If you aren’t publishing content that your employees and intranet users are interested in, they will not spend the time interacting with all the useful tools you have worked so hard to deploy on your intranet.

Now you may be wondering, what does engaging content look like? How can I measure the level of engagement my intranet content is receiving? And, what is a good framework I can provide my intranet publishers with to ensure we are all producing content our intranet users want to read?

Using AIDA to Encourage Intranet Adoption

For over a century the AIDA model has been used as an effective tactic to gain interest and inspire action through copywriting and content creation, primarily in marketing and advertising. However, the AIDA model can be used in many different avenues to garner inspiration from a target audience, such as your intranet users.  Using this tactic you can develop an engaging intranet for your employees and encourage effective intranet adoption within your company.

To execute the AIDA framework on your intranet is easy.  It requires following the four letters that make up the AIDA acronym which are:

• ATTENTION: write to grab the reader’s attention
• INTEREST:  spark their interest through a fact, story or detail
• DESIRE: create the desire to learn and read more
• ACTION: outline a direct call-to-action for the reader to follow

A – Attention

To grab the attention of your readers content needs to be quick, direct and drive curiosity.  Powerful words, phrases and graphics can be used to catch the eye of your intranet users and DRAW THEIR ATTENTION TO THE CONTENT.  For example, using the phrase “Aloha! Don’t Forget to Log Your Island Time (Complete YOUR Vacation Request Form)” or using the heading “I want to…” with one of the choices being “Fill out a vacation request form” are much more effective tactics than simply listing “Vacation Request Form” on the side menu of your intranet.

Placement is also an important factor to consider when GRABBING THE ATTENTION of your intranet users.  Burying your content in sub-folders within sub-folders will make it impossible for employees to discover and be intrigued by the valuable content you produce.  Placing an application feed widget on the home page, which pulls out newly posted content from applications such as Company News will make it more convenient for employees to find and pull up the most recent articles.

I – Interest

After you’ve captured the attention of your users you need to keep them engaged with the material you are presenting through gaining their interest.  This can be the most difficult stage, especially if your material is not especially entertaining to begin with, such as a Cash Transaction Report Form, or your CEO’s blog post on hospital initiatives.

Try to keep the information light and easy to read – which can be helped with keen page layout and formatting to draw the reader’s eye to the most important sections of your page. Your employees don’t have a lot of time to be browsing through articles on the intranet, so add sub-headings and graphics to get the point across while keeping the content brief.

D – Desire

Now it’s time to drive the point home.  You want your employees to think “this is definitely for me”. If the employee sees the benefits of engaging with the intranet, they will be glad that they did, and they will want to come back and see what else the intranet has in store for them = true intranet adoption. For example, title courses on your training calendar in such a way that your users will want to sign-in frequently to view the different courses as they are updated.  Here are some good examples of courses that have effectively created desire: “Feeling Sluggish Today? Five Ways that You Can Improve Productivity” and “Present Like a Pro: PowerPoint Tips & Tricks”.

A – Action

So now that you’ve captured your intranet users’ ATTENTION, sparked their INTEREST, driven their DESIRE, you’ll want to drive home your intranet adoption by ensuring that your employees return to the intranet in future to read content, collaborate, fill out forms, view events, and sign up for training sessions.  The ACTION is really the clutch to drive intranet adoption, making call-to-action direct and time sensitive. Some classic examples of direct and effective calls-to-actions are using interactive tools such as: polls/surveys, e-forms and discussion forums.

Ease of Use Drive Intranet Adoption

Now that the content interesting and easy to find, you’ll need to ensure that the different processes are also easy to use.  By converting your paper PDF forms into easy to fill out e-forms on the intranet, user submission time and hassle will decrease dramatically.  Your employees will enjoy the benefits of this simple process, encouraging them to return to the intranet in future to accomplish this task.

The AIDA model has been shown to be effective in capturing attention and driving action for many different target audiences – including intranet users.  Try using this AIDA framework on your intranet to increase intranet adoption within your company and keep them coming back for more.

Do you have unique ways in which you increase intranet adoption in your company? We would love to hear them.  Please leave your comments below, or e-mail connect@icthrive.com.

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