Steps to Building A Knowledge Base

Building an online knowledge base can be a great first step to creating your online authority business. If you contemplate converting all of your valuable information, guides, and tutorials to a knowledge base and selling access, there’s no time like the present! Knowledge bases are essential for long-term professional success. This article will review the steps you should take to build a knowledge base. 

Define the Purpose of Your Knowledge Base

A knowledge base helps people find answers to their questions without interacting with someone from your company. Is this your goal? You need to be clear about what you want it to be, or your plans will lack focus and direction.

Define Your Audience

A good knowledge base answers your customers’ questions. You can find these questions by listening to customer feedback and reading online discussions about your products and brand. You should also consider how familiar your customers are with your products. Some will be very familiar, and others won’t be as tech-savvy.

Define The Core Elements Of Your Knowledge Base & Set Goals

Knowledge bases typically have three core elements: articles, categories, and search functionality. Within these elements are many opportunities to customize and optimize your support documentation.

Choose a Platform to Host Your Knowledge Base

First, you need to choose a platform or software solution to host your knowledge base. Many options are available, including dedicated knowledge management solutions. They offer powerful search and content organization capabilities but require an investment in time and money.

Choose an Internal Team Leader

Someone needs to be in charge of developing content when you build a knowledge base, so choose someone who understands the business and has excellent writing skills. The best person for this role may already work on your support team or work in another department like marketing or product development.

Write New Articles for Your Knowledge Base

One of the most important things, when you build knowledge base, is writing new articles. Let’s take a look at some tips for writing articles. Keep your audience in mind. Make sure that each article has only one topic. It’s better to have multiple articles about related topics than one long, sprawling article covering everything at once. Include images wherever possible. A picture is worth a thousand words! Ideally, you should include screenshots whenever possible so your readers can see what you mean instead of trying to figure it out on their own based on your text description

Content Organization

This is a crucial step in the knowledge base creation process because if your content isn’t well organized, users will never find what they’re looking for. The best way to organize your content is by topic. Ensure you have clear categories for each type of topic that you will include in your knowledge base. It’s also helpful to include tags for each article so users can search for content based on keywords, and your customers will easily find what they need.

Bottom Line

A knowledge base is one of many ways that businesses can provide user support for their customers. There are many pros to building a knowledge base for your business, and with the following steps, you can build an effective knowledge base for your company.