Web presence into thirds: education, community, and marketing

Conversation Agent offers the following recommendation for the web presence of the future.

• 1/3 editorial impact - what the Poetae Novae called labor limae, making the content efficient while still effective; saying enough and not too much, talking about the customer and what they think (or worry) about and offering paths forward to action
• 1/3 community building - what in social media we have come to refer to as conversation, engagement, creating the connection; before it does that, it needs to be a space where someone knows our name (outside of Cheers)
• 1/3 marketing principles - the value-based bread and butter of why we buy and how we sell; I could call this positioning, except for there is a lot more to it than that

The article goes on to say: The structure of the page(s) is build around three simple questions:

• why - what's in it for you, why do you care? This is based upon what the customer has said she wants and needs
• what - exactly what are the technical specifications and details of the information the customer is looking for
• how - this talks to the service (or product) and how it is delivered, what it feels like to go through the process for the customer

I am writing this post as if I am thinking out loud. What if we followed this advice in redesign and a new approach to our web presence? A possible approach would be:

1/3 education--educational content presented in ways that are easily searchable and provide clearly written information for the casual learner and enough details for the one seeking an in-depth understanding.

1/3 communities--engaging others in conversations, listening, and learning what others are interested in and need in terms of education and information. This means we participate in all kinds of areas outside of our web site. We listen, engage, learn. Along the way, we build our personal and organizational reputation.

1/3 marketing--creating a web environment that promotes our mission and our organization through good marketing practices. Everyone throughout the organization through their online engagement understand and engage in ways that are consistent with our mission.

Each web page is built around 3 questions: 

why the page is being developed and what it means to the reader or potential reader.

what are the details of information and education that helps empower people to make decisions.

how is the learning process and the education is delivered.

 

del.icio.us Tags: web presence,web writing,online communitiy