How to write great knowledge base articles (with examples)
A knowledge base is a valuable tool for answering FAQs before they can become a burden on your support team. But if the quality of your knowledge base articles isn’t up to snuff, you’ll quickly find that they aren’t providing much value at all.
Every article you write needs to be informative, accurate, and up-to-date – as well as clear, accurate, and tailored to the reader’s needs.
In this article, we’ll show you how to write effective articles that help create a high-performing external or internal knowledge base.
But first: external vs. internal knowledge bases
You already know how important it is to have a first-rate knowledge base for your customers. But don’t sleep on the value of creating an internal knowledge base for your own employees?
What is an external knowledge base?
An external knowledge base is like a dedicated library for your customers, partners, and users. They can visit the knowledge base to find answers, learn how to use your product, or troubleshoot issues – all without needing to pick up the phone or send an email.
The goal is simple: help people help themselves. Customers are happier when they can instantly find what they need. And because they aren’t submitting a ticket for every question, your support team gets breathing room to focus on larger goals.
A high-quality internal knowledge base – made up of knowledge base articles that consistently adhere to the highest standards – goes a long way to maximize employee effectiveness, reduce the duplication of work, and increase productivity across your organization.
What is an internal knowledge base?
These days, it’s just as important to place equal importance on both the customer experience and the employee experience.
An internal knowledge base centralizes all the different types of information that exist across your organization into one searchable, easy-to-navigate place. This can range from files and documents to conversations and lived experience. Employees can easily find, share, and interact with information that’s essential to their daily work.
Why should you have an internal knowledge base?
In our on-demand society, instant access to information is the norm. Few people are willing to make time-consuming phone calls or write emails to get what they need. Why wouldn’t employees expect the same self-service model at work?
A knowledge base should be part of your overarching strategy to optimize knowledge management. It lets your company curate, store, and disseminate the wealth of information that’s trapped in emails, information silos, or knowledge that’s lost when employees leave. It goes a long way to maximize employee effectiveness, reduce the duplication of work, and increase productivity across your organization.
For example, if your organization has extensive policies and operating procedures, delivering articles on your intranet creates a searchable digital storehouse of these guidelines. Instead of spending work hours searching for information, your employees can repurpose that time to drive more value for their teams.
How to come up with knowledge base article topics
Before you can start writing articles, you need ideas. What topics will be relevant and valuable to your employees?
Here are the two major categories that we recommend starting with.
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FAQs & pain points
Start by addressing your employees’ most common questions. A few examples:
- Questions about ideas and concepts that underpin your work model.
- Example: Definitions of common KPIs, and how to measure them
- Questions about a product your team uses.
- Example: How to set up and troubleshoot a new work tool
Browse support tickets to spot patterns and frequent pain points.
Once you have a list of these topics, you can prioritize either by prevalence or severity (or a combination of the two).
-
Employee/user onboarding
Another great starting point is topics surrounding the onboarding of new employees. Some examples:
- How to set up and edit essential accounts
- Where to find documentation
- Who to ask when you have specific kinds of questions
There’s a wealth of opportunity here. Not only does it help expand your knowledge base, but it also avoids frustration and helplessness, leading to a more positive onboarding experience.
How to structure your knowledge base articles
No matter how thorough and accurate the information in your knowledge base is, it will lose credibility if the articles are written in different formats and styles. This inconsistency looks sloppy while reducing readability and engagement.
Establish a style guide for your organization that covers preferred spellings and basic grammar, as well as visual presentation for knowledge base articles. This might include fonts, type size, colors, and images. Then create a knowledge base article template to guide the structure of each piece of content. Doing so will ensure that every article looks and reads the same way.
Knowledge base article templates
When creating an article template, it should follow these essential guidelines:
- Start with the most important information (usually the problem or topic).
- Provide the definition or actionable steps in chronological order. If there’s no chronological order, put the simplest steps first.
- Include FAQs and/or related articles.
Appspace’s customer knowledge base offers a good example of this formula. Almost every article follows this structure:
- What is it?
- Use cases and/or features and functionality
- “How to” instructions
- FAQs and/or tips and tricks
Here are a few common template structures that you can copy into your own knowledge base.
Troubleshooting common product issues
- How to
- Applies to
- Description of the problem, if relevant
- Description of the solution, if relevant
- Step 1
- Step 2
- Step 3
- Etc.
- Related articles:
- Two to five articles with links
FAQs about a specific topic or product
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Applies to
- Description of topic
- Table of Contents:
- Question 1
- Question 2
- Etc.
- FAQ 1
- Answer/solution
- FAQ 2
- Answer/solution
- FAQ 3
- Answer/solution
- Etc.
- Related articles:
- Two to five articles with links
- Applies to
Additional tips for creating helpful knowledge base articles
Once you have a consistent layout and presentation nailed down, it’s time to write.
Tip #1: Know your audience
As mentioned earlier, write articles based on your key audience’s pain points and commonly asked questions. Consider how they work and what they need to know to accomplish their goals. It may seem labor-intensive to write articles for every issue that pops up repeatedly, but it will save your team time and money in the long term.
Tip #2: Choose simple article titles
When in doubt, consider which search terms employees would use for a topic. In other words, go for clarity over creativity. Use action words such as “How to,” “Using,” and “Setting up,” or simply the name such as “Vacation Policies” or “Logos.”
Tip #3: Don’t write multiple articles about the same topic
Because the purpose of knowledge base articles is to provide quick, actionable information, the last thing you want to do is confuse your reader.
Before writing an article, make sure that there isn’t already one that exists for the same or similar topic, or would trip up someone searching for those keywords.
If you already have multiple articles for a single topic, it’s worth consolidating the information into one article that comprehensively and effectively speaks to the variations around the subject.
Tip #4: Keep it simple and concise
The last thing a knowledge base article should do is unnecessarily interrupt workflows. Get to the point fast and say it in plain language. Avoid jargon and terminology that will require readers to seek out definitions, or filler content that doesn’t provide value to the user.
Tip #5: Make it scannable
Employees should never confront a wall of text in a knowledge base article. Break it up with plenty of subheads, bulleted/numbered lists, callouts, and white space. If it’s a longer article, consider including a quick table of contents at the top. This is especially helpful with articles answering several FAQs on a given subject.
Tip #6: Use relevant visuals
Show, don’t tell, whenever possible. Screenshots (especially for how-to steps), infographics, charts, and images can replace text and accelerate a reader’s comprehension of the topic.
But be judicious – every visual should enrich the information and have a clear purpose, rather than being another item the user will just want to scroll past to find the information they’re looking for.
Tip #7: Add useful links
The right links in the right places can enhance a knowledge base article, leading users to a broader and deeper understanding. Ensure the information in every link is up to date, accessible to your audience, and directly relevant to the topic.
Tip #8: Incorporate feedback
Create a feedback loop by building in opportunities for users to leave comments or contribute their own insight to knowledge base articles. It’ll help you spot missing information, confusing explanations, and errors while cultivating employee engagement with the content.
Make sure to identify employees with specific expertise to act as gatekeepers for this interactivity.
Tip #9: Use metadata
Tagging systems can help improve the search visibility of your articles. Think of tagging as a hidden navigation or site architecture that directly supports the contextual clustering of content. It also helps the employee filter the context of their search results, which further expedites access to the correct information.
Consider what terms or phrases employees might input when looking for your article.
Maintaining and surfacing fields like “created date” and “author” can also help indicate relevancy and a point of contact, respectively.
A digital destination for knowledge management
At Appspace, we’re genuinely passionate about knowledge management and are constantly experimenting to find the best ways to improve access to the right information at the right time, for all employees in every function.
At our core, we help solve business challenges by connecting people to the tools and information they need to achieve the highest levels of productivity.
With the sheer amount of information passing through internal channels in today’s digital workplaces, it’s more important than ever to consolidate tools that store and strategically surface your company’s collective knowledge in one central location.
Want to learn more about Appspace? Book a demo.
