By  Jerry Rackley

We all make mistakes, even professional marketers, who are among the best communicators in the world. The problem for us is that when we make mistakes, we often do it on a big stage.

Companies that use multiple computers typically have an intranet (an internal network) for improving communication between employees, providing product or service updates, and for training purposes. Providing employees with easy access to certain company resources and need-to-know information is an effective way of improving products or services and improving productivity levels. An intranet provides companies with an organized method for sharing files, images, and inter-department communications. Unfortunately, in many cases, companies do not properly optimize their intranet.

By Jerry Rackley

Word of Mouth is perhaps the marketer’s favorite promotional channel. We could even say that achieving a meaningful level of Word of Mouth communications is the holy grail of marketing. So how do we as marketers get more of it?

When companies want to allow their stakeholders to have easy access to company information, they typically create an extranet portal for individuals to access. Thereafter, anyone at the company with access information can log into the extranet portal.

When developing the portal, it is important to consider the overall extranet design. There are a number of reasons for this. To begin, you need to assume that someone who is not the most accustomed to technology will be accessing your portal. For this reason, it is important that the portal be very user-friendly.