Think Web, not just Web site

The role of the corporate Web site is changing. As more information finds audiences via RSS feeds, text messages and status updates, trends point to the corporate web site becoming less important. Emerging social channels are forcing companies to think beyond their Web sites to join the growing number of online platforms to reach their target audiences.

As marketers make this transition from thinking Web site to simply thinking Web, it’s important that the main strategic driver remain the same — providing target audiences with high quality, timely, relevant content. After that, it is just a matter of creating your own mix of platforms to match your audience. Publish content on YouTube and Facebook. Tweet it and blog about it too. In many cases a good corporate blog is surpassing the corporate Web site in visits and contains much more pertinent and timely content.

The tools used to build and manage a Web presence are maturing. The technology can be free, for the most part, if you use social outlets or open-source content management systems (CMS). These easy-to-deploy technologies make it simple to put the focus once again on content creation — where it should be.

Here are a few other things to keep in mind when thinking Web:

•    Generate rich content, such as video
•    Create cross-media integration points
•    Mashup related YouTube, blog & Twitter streams
•    Put function over form
•    Simplify where possible
•    Create optimized versions for mobile

With an understanding of your audience’s online goals, and a commitment to providing content that answers their questions, you’ll be able to focus on spending the majority of your time and budget on generating interesting, relevant information that will help ensure a good user experience.


Comments

[Ben]

Right on. Nice post. We're starting to get into discussions w/ clients about how to stitch together their .com site, FB page, Twitter, blog, etc.

We've also been hearing noise from companies like ThisMoment who take the big social hubs, add content like video, UGC, commentary, etc. and put forth a "brand channel".

There was an AdAge piece about a project they did for the new movie "Kick Ass" (archived so I can't link it). Interesting article, in large part because of the debate it sparked in the "comments" (is it just another silo?, etc.)

In any event. Good stuff. Good discussion around the role of the web as well as the webSITE.

Cheers.