Plan Your Content Group Strategy

The most common mistake in setting up a workspace is not choosing the wrong content, it is confusing how people are classified with how content is organized. Get the distinction right and the correct content reaches the correct people automatically. Get it wrong and you spend the life of the program working around it.

Learn the three building blocks

Three things do three different jobs, and the word "group" is what causes the confusion.

• Departments and Locations classify people. They are attributes of a user, not categories of content. They power reporting filters, content email targeting and leaderboard segmentation.
• Content groups organize content. Think of them as channels. Each one is a topic somebody can browse, join or be assigned to.
• Assignments connect the two. They subscribe people to content groups automatically based on their department or location, so nobody has to hunt.

Said once more, because it is the thing worth remembering: departments describe who someone is, content groups describe what the content is, assignments join them up.

Use Assignments to Enhance Program Management covers the connecting layer, and the glossary has the definitions.

Classify your people first

Departments and locations decide what you will be able to measure and target later, so they are worth thinking about before launch rather than after.

1. Create a default department that catches anyone who does not fit, something like Corporate Employees. Every workspace needs one, because self-selection produces surprises.
2. Add your core business functions. Marketing, Sales, Technology, HR, Operations, Finance. Broad enough that people can place themselves correctly.
3. Leave sub-divisions until later. Add granularity only when you genuinely need the reporting and the program has matured.
4. Pre-assign where you can. Setting the department on the invitation removes self-selection errors and immediately improves reporting accuracy. See Invite Users to Join EveryoneSocial.

Organize your content into groups

People decide within seconds whether a feed is relevant to them, and your group structure is what creates that impression. Three types cover almost every program.

• Universal groups, assigned to everyone. Company news, industry trends, culture. Non-negotiable content everyone should see.
• Role-targeted groups, assigned by department. Sales enablement content, recruiting content, engineering content. These are what make the feed feel personal, and they are also what builds each person's credibility in their own subject. See Find Your Lane: Building Topical Authority.
• Optional groups, discoverable and joined by choice. Passion topics, regional groups, communities of interest.

Start with four to eight groups. Fewer than four and the feed feels undifferentiated. More than eight at launch and you cannot keep any of them stocked, which is the failure that kills more programs than any other.

See Create and Edit Public Groups, Create a Private Group and Add Members and Group Examples for a Successful Workspace.

Stock every group before launch

Ten to fifteen pieces of content loaded before day one, spread across your groups, is the difference between a feed that looks alive and one that looks abandoned. An empty group is worse than no group.

To keep them stocked afterwards, mix sources: company content, curated third-party material, and content your own people submit. Automated sources help with the middle category, with the caveat that they need supervision rather than being left to run. See Source Content Using Feeds and Keywords and RSS Feeds and EveryoneSocial.

Decide who runs each group

A group without a named owner and a publishing cadence goes quiet. Assign a Moderator per active group, ideally someone close to the subject matter rather than someone senior. Two or three per group works better than one, and it means content keeps flowing when somebody is away.

See Assign Moderators to a Group, Configure a Group's Settings and Content Moderation Guide.

Know what the structure unlocks

The classification work pays off in three places, which is worth explaining to anyone who thinks it is administrative overhead.

• Reporting. Filter activity by team, region or function. See Measure Program Health.
• Content emails. Send a Sales digest containing only sales-relevant content. See Create Content Emails.
• Campaigns. Run a leaderboard for one department or region so the competition is fair. See Run Recognition and Leaderboard Campaigns.

FAQ

What is the difference between a department and a content group?

A department classifies a person. A content group organizes content. Assignments connect them, so somebody in Sales is automatically subscribed to the groups relevant to Sales.

How many content groups should we start with?

Four to eight. The constraint is how many you can keep stocked, not how many topics you can think of.

Should users pick their own department?

They can, and pre-assigning on the invitation is more accurate. Where users do self-select, tell them to choose the default if they are unsure.

Can one person be in several content groups?

Yes, and most people should be. A typical advocate belongs to the universal groups plus the ones matching their role.

When should we add more groups?

When an existing group is consistently busy enough to split, and you have someone to own the new one. Not before.