Daniel Russell is a “user happiness” researcher and team leader at Google. It is his job to understand what people do when searching with Google. He teaches classes on Internet search skills and blogs on the topic to share what he knows. He also learns from the users who attend his class and read his blog posts. For his knowledge to become a true company asset it needs to be enhanced, managed and effectively used as content.

Such knowledge driven content encourages companies to stay close to their customers. It can easily adapt to changes in customer needs. It can also find its way into product design if shared properly.

To convert knowledge into content follow these steps.

1. Customer knowledge is a two way street – give and get.  Daniel’s post on Google’s Inside Search blog is an example of building product and customer knowledge into findable, shareable, credible content. Find a person at your company who can play the role Daniel does at Google.
2. Enhance. Do not simply store away what is known in a customer management system or database. Teach a class or webinar that allows you to observe and gather. Write a blog post that describes hands-on experience. From it, users will sense something about the company culture as well.
3. Manage. Daniel doesn’t write just one blog post, but a series of posts on Internet search skills. The content needs to be aligned with company objectives and user interests. He tells us that recent changes have been made for searching images so the examples he uses involve searching for images.
4. Use Effectively. In your blog posts and classes include examples and new ways to use the product. Daniel shares ideas on using Google Images that the average user would not know: How to verify the gender of a name and how to find a book without its title.
5. When you need help on how to enhance, manage and effectively use knowledge driven content talk with a content strategist.

What kind of content are you creating with your customer knowledge?

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