Your Internet Strategies

Is your website up to date?

Is your website up to date? How do you manage your content changes? Some suggestions on how to review and update your website.

Your business or organization continues to grow, develop and change over time.

You add new services or products, you may change your location, have news of a new event or something that has happened. Is your website reflecting your CURRENT situation? or is it showing old and outdated information and is not accurately reflecting you?

Perhaps the information on the website is WRONG and you are losing opportunities with new contacts or current clients and customers that may visit the site.

During the phase when you designed your website you or one of your employees was very focused on what the website said. However it is very common that after the site is launched your attention may have turned elsewhere and you never actually take a look at your website. Maybe you check your visitor statistics or check how you are doing in the search engines — but when is the last time you actually LOOKED at your website.

One way to do this is go to your website URL and think of your self as the type of person that would be visiting it for the first time. What would you be looking for? Is it easy to find it? What are the ACTION items? Can you sign up for a newsletter or contact the organization easily? Make a note of the information that you had questions about or would have a problem with as a visitor

Then put on your owner or manager hat — as you go through the site. Is it accurate and up to date in the different sections? Check the ABOUT section, products and services, upcoming and past events, bios or descriptions of people, contact information, picture galleries etc. Your site might not have all of these and it might have other sections and pages. Make a LIST of pages that need to be updated. Make a list of the content that needs to be CHANGED and the content that needs to be DELETED and the content that must be ADDED.

Content management is really a 2 step process. The owner / manager / marketing person is responsible for identifying the actual content – text, links, photos, videos. Then either you communicate this information to your website person, or your internet partner who manages your website, or you do the updates yourself. Assign one person, or put it on your “to do list” to review your website once a month.

Aleph Consulting is announcing a new “Content Management Service” (CMS) that will enable you to update the website yourself with little technical expertise. If you can use MS Word or other word processing software you will be able to do the edits yourself and see the updates on the website immediately as you review.

This service is due to launch on March 5, 2010. If you would like more information about this please contact me davies@alephinc.com

Maximizing your web content

It takes time to write a new blog, or add new content to your website. There are some ways that will help you to maximize your time and effort and get the most visibility for your thoughts and ideas.

One of the things that I find helpful in creating new content is to listen and look at the comments and questions that people ask you about their website. A big question is about content and time. It takes time to write a new blog, or add new content to your website. There are some ways that will help you to maximize your time and effort and get the most visibility for your thoughts and ideas.

A few content areas that you may be using include:

Your website
Email Newlsetter
Blog
Facebook
LinkedIN
Twitter
Articles

Here are a few suggestions on maximizing your efforts:

Use your blog to write about topics of interest to your clients and prospects
On your blog add a “SHARE” button that makes it easy for readers to post something of interest on their own social networks
Add a “FEED” from your blog to your website.
In Facebook – setup a “Networked Blogs” in the Facebook Applications – register your blog and in the setup area set it to pull new postings from your blog onto your Facebook page. You can invite your Facebook friends to sign up to receive notices and you can send out messages to those signed up.
Setup your Twitter account to pull new postings from your blog.
Add the “BLOG” app to your LinkedIN profile. Then register your blog – this will pull your posting and display it in your LinkedIN profile
When you are writing your email newsletter – look at your blog and identify topics you might want to include in the newsletter – then give exerpts and links back to your blog to read the full posting.
Review your blog postings when you write your articles for ezine Articles or other article posting sites.

These are just a few suggestions for maximizing the reach and value of your content. Feel free to send any other suggestions.

Email Newsletters – Content Ideas

Content ideas for nonprofit email newsletters

One of the comments I often hear from nonprofits is that they have too much that they want to include in their newsletter and are not sure how best to use it. The other issue is not enough time. Here are a few suggestions that should help.

First of all make a plan for the year. Take your calendar and mark in the major holidays and yearly themes. Then on the calendar mark in any special events or activities that your organization has already planned – this could be your fundraising events, seminars, special program dates.

Then make a list of your program areas, target audiences and calls to action that you want to include. Look at the content sources that you already have – print newsletter, website, program guides, tutorials and seminars that you offer, stories from your clients, volunteers and staff.

Look at the calendar and pick the topics and calls to action that you want to feature in each month. Don’t try and include everything in the newsletter. Instead think of this as hitting the main topic, a story from a client or volunteer, and use the newsletter to bring people to the website to read the full article or details and to respond.

For more ideas sign up for my email newsletter “Internet Strategies and Tips“: Signup for our Email Newsletter

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: