What is a community repository of Knowledge?

A repository of knowledge is a system or tool that is used to store and access organizational knowledge, artifacts, and other content. There are two kinds of knowledge repositories, Public and Private. Public repositories exist to manage public domain intelligence whereas Private database repositories manage enterprise and proprietary information. 

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Communities are an example of private repositories. Knowledge repositories in a community are a system that stores all the information regarding the company/ brand and the community. The repository consists of data not just from community managers but from community members themselves regarding their experiences in the community. There is no formal format for a community knowledge repository, so even if you don't think you’re a good writer you can add your two cents in any way you want to, be it videos, memes or audios. 

Why do you need a community repository of knowledge?

In general people prefer to try to solve their problems by themselves instead of asking for support, most of these start by looking through a company's online resources, if they do no find a good enough support they might get annoyed and decide to switch to another service. 

The purpose of a community repository of knowledge is two pronged, it will help assimilate new community members easily to the community and also give existing community members a newer purpose and another layer of loyalty to your company and community. 

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To make sure to cater to this need of your community members, you need an extensive knowledge repository consisting of :

 - Directions and tips for using your products and services: Find the main points with which majority of your audience struggles and create a step by step guide to work with it.

 - Answers to FAQs: Create a guide about your Frequently Asked Questions so that you can save time with community support.

 - Content you’ve created that can provide in-depth solutions, video demonstrations: All your content doesn’t need to be in written form, you can provide audio instructions or even video demonstrations.

 - Company information: Provide a space where all the information about your community and company is available so that people can understand what exactly you are about.

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Knowledge repositories also help save time for both community members and community managers, instead of waiting for answers or wasting time answering repeatedly asked questions, community members can get all their queries answered with one simple click.

How to create a community repository of knowledge?

Something as simple as putting everything on a document is a repository itself. To give you an example, we made Community OS on Notion and it went on to be a huge hit amongst community folks.

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Start sharing your experiences and putting them all in one place, doesn’t matter where. Invite members to share their insights too. Anything you learn, whether it is a lesson from failure or success, document everything. If you are wondering that you’re not a writer, who cares. As long as you can get the message across the job is done. Look at how other people write and draw inspiration from there. Curate instead of creating. Find content that resonates with your ideologies and work with that.

Once you have a couple documents, you need to separate them on basis of topics of format of documents. This is to make it easier on your community members to find exactly what they want and in what format they want. This also helps your community members feel heard and more connected to the community and makes it easier to assimilate new community members to the community.

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