Many of my most absorbing projects over the past 15 years have been website design and development initiatives. Before social media, websites represented wholesale change in how organizations were called upon to represent themselves, probably the biggest change since the introduction of television advertising. They still do.
But the real, fundamental difference, of course, is something that has been said since the beginning of website fever: websites are ubiquitous, 24/7, available for all to see.
So every choice matters. A lot.
Websites say a great deal about how the organization thinks about itself and about how it regards its consumers. If you give a website more than a cursory look, you will notice which comes first (is it information about the organization itself, or something of value to you the visitor?). You will most likely have some reaction to the navigation provided (easy to find what you need, absorbing in a way that you didn't expect ... or not?). And, of course, you will be delivered a brand experience.
All of this is very exciting for a marketer, and I thought it would be great fun for a marketer looking to market herself. So I was surprised that when I began to sketch out a website for this next era of my business, I found myself stymied. I looked at a lot of sites and frankly didn't feel that I could do better.
More than anything, I want to be inspiring and useful. (Don't we all?) When you visit here, my goal is for you to find something interesting to think about, and feel that there will be something we can do together that will change, or at least fundamentally help, the trajectory of your organization. That is, I hope to be more about you than about me. I'm not just being self-effacing here. That in a nutshell is my theory of how organizations compel constituents, add value, and grow.
I'm still a big fan of websites, and I hope to do many more of them. So why, for me, a blogsite and not a website?
Because this choice does three things. One, having a blogsite forces me to verbalize more of what I have learned and what I observe, because the blog-front-and-center format requires constant updates. If my value proposition is that I have a wealth of knowledge and experience to share, and it is, then this format should help me demonstrate that.
Two, the blogsite gives me a platform for writing, which I love. It also allows me to deliver more information in less formal chunks. I've always wanted to write and publish articles and papers, and I'm planning to do that too. But this is more immediate and that is very appealing.
And three, having made the decision, I can convey to you in a real-life example that the expected solution is not always the best solution. And that the process of thinking that through can be powerful and beneficial.
