Content strategy and planning
An online communications strategy or web content plan is a coordinated organisation-wide approach to doing business online. It answers these questions:
- What are do we want to achieve online?
- Who are our audiences and what do they want? Where do they go online?
- What will make our online presence a success? How will we measure it?
- What’s the relation between our website(s) and how we use social media sites such as FaceBook?
- How should our online presence be managed? Who should do what?
- What policies, procedures and guidelines do we need? How do we make sure they are complied with?
- What will it take to transform our website? How much will it cost? How long with it take?
When do you need a web content plan?
Our clients often come to us for a online communications strategy or web content plan because they are experiencing problems in one of these areas:
- They have too many websites each heading in different direction
- Each business area is doing their own thing on the web (closely related to above!) and it is confusing for customers
- Their website has grown organically/haphazardly for the last 5 years; it’s now time to evaluate what’s been achieved so far and set the direction for the future
- There’s concern throughout the organisation about their websites – business units don’t feel the website serves their needs, managers aren’t sure if it’s successful or not, the web manager doesn’t think they are meeting the required website standards.
How to develop a web content plan
The main activities we usually undertake in developing a web strategy are:
- Evaluation of the current website and online environment through expert review (usability, accessibility, standards compliance), analysis of website statistics
- Benchmarking against similar organisations
- Research with customers to determine their needs through interview, focus group or survey
- Consultation across the organisation to establish business needs through interview, workshops, survey
- Detailed analysis, brainstorming, option analysis and review
