Why do we call it a Knowledge Center and not an Information Center? Inertia!
Introducing the IntroCave Knowledge Center
If you scroll down all the way to the bottom of this page (and any page on IntroCave), there's a new section down there: the Knowledge Center. It's actually been there for awhile now, but I've been tinkering with the content and formatting. I wouldn't say that I'm 100% happy with the content yet, but I am happy with the format. It does beg the question, though: what's a knowledge center?
It's... basically a blog post. Or an extended FAQ. Or fuel for SEO.
It's all of those things and not exactly the same as either of them.
Why isn't it a Blog Post?
Blog posts are ephemeral. I enjoy writing them, but I don't spend a ton of time on each individual blog post because they just don't hang around that long. Sure, there's an archive... but the value of the blogs is that they tell a story over time. There's not a ton that happens in any single blog post, but to me their value builds over time (as they carry the history of the site).
A good knowledge center article is neither short nor topical. They should contain evergreen content, and because the content will stick around longer I can invest more time and effort into a single article. Some SEO experts would argue that blog posts do hang around and that you should continue to revise them over time to draw in more search traffic. IntroCave isn't yet throwing off enough cash to support full time attention, so I have to be a little more tactical with my time.
Why isn' it a FAQ?
Though this isn't super evident in the first two articles I'm publishing, one of the main reasons to have a Knowledge Center is to answer customer questions in excruciating detail. Why wouldn't I just put those answers in the FAQ? The FAQ largely serves to answer the questions of potential customers, to help get them over the hump and turn them into actual paying customers.
What about customers who have already paid? Those questions usually hit my inbox. If I can create articles that thoroughly answer common problems that customers are having, those articles can do double duty. Some number of users will find those articles on their own and solve their own problems. For the rest, I'll have a great resource I can point them to in my response, which will take a LOT less time than responding individually. I get quite a few emails asking about downloading and editing workflows for mobile phones, so my first two articles that fit this mold will focus on pratical workflows for iPhones and Android phones.
Why isn't fuel for SEO?
This is splitting hairs a bit, because good Knowledge Center articles can absolutely draw links and search traffic. It's not neccessarily what I'm most interested in, though. Just as blog posts tend to be topical, ephemeral, and short—you could say all those same things about the monthly newsletters I send. Just like the blog posts, though, that content dries up the moment I stop writing them.
Enter marketing automation. When someone signs up for an IntroCave account, I can start sending a sequence of emails pointing to these evergreen articles that help nurture them into paying customers. I'm not neccessarily interested in optimizing these articles to hit specific keywords so much as I want to use them to increase my conversion rates.
When will it be done?
I've got two more articles in the works already, and once I polish those up I'll keep an eye on how they do and start thinking about what comes next! A lot of this is purely hypothetical. The only way to know whether these articles will help out with customer support or conversion rates will be to put them out there and try to measure what happens after they go live.