How to Set up a Knowledge Base (and How Evernote Can Help)

A knowledge base can be a powerful asset to your business or organization. If you’re not already familiar, a knowledge base is a piece of software that lets you centralize information, whether it’s to provide a searchable resource for employees, provide user support for your customers, or a number of other uses. In this article, we’ll guide you through how to set up and maintain such a knowledge base for yourself — and how Evernote can be a great addition to your arsenal.

Determine Your Objective

While this may seem evident at first glance, it might be worth taking the time to think about it in detail. It’s one thing to want to set up a knowledge base for your employees or customers, but what exactly does that mean? Will it be for customer support? Troubleshooting? Internal documentation? A combination of the above? Having a clear goal upfront will make everything else easier.

Assemble Your Team

The first thing you need when setting up a knowledge base: knowledge! Before you even start shopping around for knowledge base tools, assemble a team of relevant people for the task: marketers, writers, customer relationship managers, web developers, and whatever IT / tech people you need. Putting together a knowledge base isn’t going to be a small task, and a multidisciplinary team will help make sure all the angles are covered.

Choose the Right Software

Now it’s time to start choosing the right knowledge base system for you. Do some research and consider the most important features of good knowledge base software:

• Self-service. A growing portion of customers are digital natives who have little interest in talking to support staff on the phone or even participating in support chat: they want to handle things themselves. If your knowledge base is customer-facing, make sure the software allows for self-service as much as possible.
• Search capabilities. Even if you meticulously categorize your knowledge base, many people won’t go browsing through those categories. Instead, they’ll use the search function — and if that search doesn’t bring back good results, they may just leave. A strong search function is vital.
• Analytics and feedback. The only way to truly measure success is to have metrics and analytics. Good knowledge base software should be able to tell you how customers use your product, gather feedback, and measure performance so you can identify trouble spots and make improvements.
• Content management. Being able to easily create, revise, and publish content is every bit as important as being able to access it. The right knowledge base system will have an easy, intuitive way to create and manage content, so your team doesn’t spend a lot of time struggling with it.

Structure and Workflow

Once you’ve chosen the right software, figure out the structure of your knowledge base. What content will you include (videos, tutorials, blog articles, documents)? What kind of information will you share (customer support and troubleshooting guides, company information, etc.)?

After that, give some thought to how you will manage the development and maintenance of your knowledge base. This is one area in which Evernote can be a major help.

Evernote is a popular and widely-used tool among both individuals and businesses, and can be a powerful tool when building your knowledge base. Examples include:

• Uploading and organizing documents. Evernote lets you upload a wide variety of filetypes, from documents to images and videos, which can be tagged for easy access.
• Scheduling. Evernote has built-in reminder features to make sure tasks don’t fall through the cracks.
• Team and task management. Evernote’s checklist and reminder features make it simple to track tasks and deadlines, and shared notebooks aid with collaboration and keeps everyone up-to-date on projects.

This only scratches the surface of what Evernote can do to make setting up your knowledge base easier.

Develop the Content

Now that you’re a veritable powerhouse of organization, it’s time to start developing that content. Assign categories and sections to the appropriate team members, encourage collaboration to ensure consistency and accuracy, and maybe create a style guide to make sure your presentation is consistent.

Review and Update

Finally, remember that a knowledge base is a dynamic resource, not a fire-and-forget solution. In order to remain helpful, the base must be monitored, updated, and improved. Nothing will turn a customer off faster than searching the knowledge base and finding outdated information, or worse — no information at all on your latest product or service. The maintenance of your knowledge base should be an ongoing task, with information kept up-to-date and feedback incorporated to make sure you’re giving your customers or employees have the best experience possible. Setting up a knowledge base can be an involved and challenging task, but the benefits far outweigh the costs of developing one.