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Jun 10, 2009 by Paul WhiteAs technology has evolved so has Joe average. Joe now carries a Smart Phone, he has a blog, and his thumbs are bleeding from his obsessive twittering. So what does this all mean? The average consumer has become less dependent on the traditional forms of media (TV, Radio, and Print). The good news is they have not yet become solitary critters that can survive without some form of contact with the outside world. These people are constantly online. Even if they are away from their computer they still have a cell phone with a fancy 3G data plan, and they are visiting websites anytime life delays them (stuck in traffic, long line at McDonalds, taking a dump)
To Properly Maximize your web presence you must focus on the following.
Content, Presentation, Interaction, Search, Control
Content
The right content will develop word of mouth, and keep your visitors coming back for more. It?s important for your content to connect with your visitors. Does it focus on issues and topics of the day, or is it too specific to one niche or another. Try to create content that keeps up with culture. If there is some new diet program, make content that will focus on it. If there is some local drama write a story on it. Focusing on content is not just about providing good reading material for your visitors. If your station uses Google Adsense to help fill vacant advertising spots, good content will help to drive higher paying ads to your website.
Presentation
Consumers are used to fancy fast moving graphics on TV, and colorful layouts on print. Your website should do its best to present your content in a visual form, and not just lots of text. Some websites use rotating slide shows helping to drive focus on their latest content. Using flash or JPG images to go along with you content will help to keep your visitors more engaged, and keep them on your site longer. Make sure your text is not pushed up against margins or borders. Try to develop a sense of contrast between objects on the page. This will make reading your website?s content easier on the eyes. Years ago developers tried to keep content restricted to fit an 800 x 600 display. But these days with everyone having a wide screen display and sometimes up to 1920 horizontal pixels, there is a lot more real estate available for your website. However this doesn?t mean you should try to fill 100% of the horizontal space. Most Major Websites such as yahoo stick to a standard 950 horizontal pixels. This makes the layouts compatible with most displays.
Interaction
Give your visitors the ability to comment on your content. This is where blogs are very successful. They post a blog entry, and then people post comments. This gives the website the ability to capture this user?s email, and possibly notify them when new comments are posted to the same article they showed interest in. Just be sure to moderate your comments so users do not abuse them to advertise their own agenda.
Search
Traffic referred by major search engines should be a top priority. This traffic is like stock dividends. Even though quality content with photos, and or videos takes a lot of time, over the long term it?s worth it. As people find your content, some will link to it on their blogs and forums. These external links will increase your ranking on leading search engines causing even more people to find your content. But for this to work you must preserve and make it assessable even when it gets old. Try to use titles that closely resemble what people would search for on Google, and use good SEO practices on your website?s content.
Control
Larger websites have some form of CMS (Content Management System). If you are dependent on your web master to make all your updates, this could bring a lot of problems in the future should your web master leave the company. Your website should have a CMS allowing anyone at your station to post new content to the site. CMS also helps to spread the work load so no one person is liable. Though it can be expensive to develop a highly integrated CMS based website, the long term savings will pay for it in just a few weeks.
Note on Integration
As your website grows you are likely to find yourself needing to expand and or add on new sections. There has been a growing trend of companies making decisions based on what saves them money now rather than what saves them money in the long term. They resort to prefabricated systems rather than properly integrating new sections into the current site. If the new add-on is going to be part of the sites long term objectives, its best to custom develop it so it has a seam less appearance to your website?s visitors. Using prefabricated add-ons is like using duct tape to attach a hood scoop to your car, and then entering it at a car show. Sure it?s functional but don?t get your hopes up to win that trophy.
Final Note on social networking
Put the focus on your website and not MySpace, Face Book or Twitter. Having 1 million friends is worthless since most of them are not likely to have you in their top 20 list. Sure having a station profile on MySpace might drive some traffic to your website, but you would be better off spending that time making your own quality content rather than spending all day approving new friends, and posting comments on other MySpace Profiles. Remember the only person getting rich on MySpace is Tom, and news corp. Keep your DJs focused on pushing your Station Website. If they want a blog, it should be part of the station website.
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