You walked over to your IA and said, “I want a dynamic, modular, customizable, and personal website for my visitors. Let visitors design their experience!” They went back trying to configure that requirement into their traditional web software design tools, and they freeze. Trying to implement a social media strategy on your website and throwing up your hands in frustration as the nebulous and fluid nature of social media destroys that rock solid and logical foundation is probably why most have yet to attempt that pull vs. push strategy. If this is really the way you want to go (and by the way, you should!), then there are a 3 things you’ll want to establish at the onset. Some points are things you should already be thinking about with a traditional site, but it is even more important when you allow interaction and content to travel through a social media platform.

  1. Keep it focused, keep it simple. Determine up front the primary objective for you website. Selling cookies, servicing existing clients, a how to on shrinking your carbon foot print, whatever it is, pick one thing and focus on that. It is inevitable that you have multiple types of visitors and segment and they all have different needs. The reality is, you can’t be all things to all people. Your website is the one place where you can do what you want to do best online.
  2. Timing creates relevance. Recognize how seasonality or periods will impact what your visitors are expecting on your site and be flexible and automated in what they see first. This is how you can be agile in attempting to serve multiple interests. Campaigns in market drive visitors with specific needs based on what your call to action was. However, after these periods of heavy advertising, visitation profiles and behavior change and your primary content should as well.
  3. Website as an Ad Network. This is the real change in thinking. Your site is no longer an internet PDF. Your blogs, widgets, articles, and comments will travel. If you don’t think you have any control over this, you are partially correct. However, how you decide to place and allow content to travel to tell your story is in your control. Rather than tighten control over content, strategically leverage it in the same fashion you would with contextual marketing and display advertising.

Taking these three points into account will ensure you have the right place to start and the most flexible design to fit your purpose.


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