by Chris Day

Your biggest asset is not your offices, your processes, your customer base or even your excellent team. Your biggest asset is the Knowledge that resides with both you and the other people in your business. . That knowledgebase resides, not in filing cabinets or on the server, but in the collective brains of the entire team. It is your biggest, most exciting resource and usually most under utilised resource!

In a competitive and challenging marketplace, Using Corporate Knowledge strategically is the one thing that can position your business above all your local competition, raise profile and make you a real customer magnet. Everyone will want to do business with the company that has demonstrated that they are the most knowledgeable on their specialist subject.  But there is far more to this than having a good newsletter!

Many professional practices and specialist businesses, whilst recognising the value of sharing knowledge, by inviting potential customers to specialist seminars and networking events,  or by writing fact sheets, newsletters, and blogs, often do so because every other business in their sector does the same,  rather than with a strategy or specific objective in mind.

Without measurable objectives, these activities can lose focus and end up being done out of habit rather than to achieve a specific corporate objective and can end up costing more than they contribute.

If your intellectual property only sees the light of day when a client is paying for your time ÔÇô you are missing a big opportunity.

The secret to positioning your business as a leader in its field, is to position you and your key partners as Thought Leaders in their own right. This doesnÔÇÖt happen by accident.

That means using your knowledge strategically to:

• ┬áattract attention in the market place
• be seen to respond to topical issues with expert comment
• demonstrate you have answers and solutions to peopleÔÇÖs problems
• show that you are an expert in your field
• create a following of people interested in your point of view
• repurpose your words into a range of knowledge products that can be sold in a wider marketplace.

It is not enough to have a string of letters after your name. Every other professional in your field has those. It is not what you may know, but what you choose to do with that knowledge that will make the difference to how you  and your business you are perceived in the market place.  Knowledge, like everything else, needs to be packaged and marketed for it to have value.

If knowledge alone was all it took to be successful, then every academic would be driving a Porsche, not a bicycle.

Many business are already using their corporate knowledge to good effect by

• Organising specialist seminars
• Holding networking events
• Sending out factsheets
• Regular newsletters
• Blogs and Forums
• Online social and business networking

All of these are opportunities to create valuable content in response to questions.

Questions, asked at an event, challenge all of us to draw on our knowledge and experience to provide the best answer we are capable of. So often we come off stage and say ÔÇ£If only IÔÇÖd written that down!ÔÇØ but it is too late and that little gem is lost forever.

Many fail to realise that words are the building blocks of all knowledge products.  Words delivered at a seminar, if recorded and transcribed, can be repurposed into articles, a chapter in a book, content for a newsletter or a blog. They have a value, but only if captured!