Signing In for Content

I advocate putting as much information as possible on a web site. It is an excellent way of displaying one’s expertise in a specific area of knowledge or industry. Truthfully if you have it, flaunt it and don’t worry too much about others taking your ideas – you’ll make more – if you’re the real thing. This approach promotes production of useful and relevant content so visitors will make your web site the first place to seek information about a particular subject. In turn it will encourage repeat traffic and thought leadership on informational web sites.

Of course there are proprietary assets and processes that really are part of intellectual property, then it is important to balance how much you share.

There are other times when it makes sense to ask visitors to do a little more to get even deeper detailed data.

From a marketing point of view, when you ask visitors to register on your secure site, take a survey or enter their personal facts make it mutually advantageous for the information seeker as well as provider. This should be content individuals would find worthwhile sharing a little bit of their own personal information for such as a white paper on a pertinent topic, an audit calculator, or customized content.

Be clear about what you are going to do with the collected material. Making visitors sign up for content gratuitously won’t be beneficial for either party and will prompt them to look elsewhere for the content anyway. After all it is the Internet.


Next: Content Management Systems


Copyright© 2009 Lule Dine All Rights Reserved.

The Yin-Yang of Business Objectives

The main objective of your web content is to support your business objectives. The main objective of your web content is to support your customer needs. That’s right “complementary opposites within a greater whole.” Both objectives need to be accomplished and they don’t have to compete, however, the balancing act is where the art lies.

Weighing content on the side of customer needs is more strategic because customer perspectives on your offerings differ from your product managers. Customers:

• Approach your products depending how and when they use it
  
• Seek value
  
• Require clarity 

Organize content and support both objectives by:

• Thinking of your offerings as a continuum and present your content in that way. Be prepared to work across product and service lines. This will provide your business the opportunity to start bundling.
  
• Generate content that will improve the customer’s knowledge and increase their value perception. This provides the business the forum to cross-market.
  
• Always include customer service information at your top level. Customers will have a fast track to resolving their issues and you show how the business stands behind their products and services.
  

The biggest challenge will be working with different business partners and product managers. Their goal, and this is how they are compensated, is to sell their discreet product or solution -- yours will be to bring them together in a meaningful way.


Next: Sign-in content


Copyright© 2009 Lule Dine All Rights Reserved.