Contributed by Gerry McGovern
- Support Is the New Marketing: Why Web Marketing Is So Different From Offline Marketing
On the Web, customers want details, facts, comparisons, and feedback from other customers. They avoid the fluff and waffle and ...
- Killer Web Content Examples
Out of 18 choices, why does one piece of content get 49% of the vote while another gets 0%?
- Content Is a Science, Not an Art
Senior managers don't take content seriously because people who write content don't come across as being serious. If content professionals ...
- The Best Web Sites Are Useful and Ugly
Functionality and usefulness are far more important to the success of your Web site than how nice and elegant it ...
- Web Sites: Designed by Dogs, Managed by Cats
A key danger in Web site design is over-ambition. We need to design a Web site we can professionally Here's ...
- 7 Main Principles of the Web
There are few better websites than the BBC, and there are few organizations that truly get what the Web is ...
- How to Professionally Manage Search
The following are the steps involved in professionally managing 1. Identify the top 200-400 search terms on your website. ...
- Google Changes Everything
Imagine you are very rich and you have a big house. One evening you have guests over. One of the ...
- Five Key Characteristics of Web Brands
The Web brand is useful, clear, simple, interactive, and most importantly, "Google has knocked Microsoft off the top spot and ...
- The Problem of Dirty Data
More than 25 percent of critical data in Fortune 1,000 companies is poor quality because organizations have little experience in ...
- Why Simplicity Is Essential to Web Design
Simplicity is highly overrated, according to Donald , a design thinker I very much "I'm a champion of elegance, simplicity, ...
- The 'Intention Economy': Customer Power That's Driven by the Web
The shift from organization power to customer power continues, as customers use the Web to organize themselves like never The ...
- The Future Is Collaborative
If the Web were a film, its plot would be much more like that of Lord of the Rings and ...
- Links Are the Grammar of the Web
Linking is the foundation of every quality website. Everything starts with the link. You build from the link, not from ...
- The Twilight of Print
When the tool changes, so too should the skill and the technique. More and more, hypertext is replacing text... and ...
- Don't Stereotype Your Customers
Even if you're serving the same group of customers, their needs may have changed. This may mean having to change ...
- Don't Let Your Blog Come Back to Haunt You
In an age of instant messaging, you should take a lot more than an instant to consider what exactly it ...
- PDFs Are Evil, Lazy, Slothful and Sinful
PowerPoints are the curse of the intranet, and PDFs the curse of the Web. PDFs reflect print thinking. On the ...
- Cheap At Heart, Part 2
If there's one thing that we hold in common as a human race it's that, when we're on the Web, ...
- Words That Work
Do people search using basic, simple, old words? But when they arrive at a Web site, are they moved to ...
- The Web At 15
Who would have thought that the emergence of the Web would have initiated a text revolution? Never before have so ...
- Content That Drives Sales and Productivity
Most organizations do not properly understand or manage content. They fail to realize that quality content is now key to ...
- Killer Web Content: Make the Sale, Deliver the Service, Build the Brand
Do you have the killer instinct? A small percentage of Web content really makes a difference. It makes the sale, delivers ...
- Recovering from Organization-Centricity
Admit you have a The first step to recovery is to admit that you are organization-centric. Say Take off your ...
- Focused on the Small Screen, Missing the Bigger Picture?
Too often we are managed by the technology. Endlessly busy, it's easy to forget just exactly why we are doing ...
- What Your Web Site Can Learn from Starbucks
Like all great self-service organizations, knows that you should never keep the customer The July 2006 like-for-like sales for Starbucks ...
- Why Award-Winning Web Sites Are So Awful
Practical and functional Web sites rarely win prizes for design, but they do win sales and make Recently, I did ...
- The Most Irritating Web Site in the World
Scandinavian (SAS) may be in love with itself. But it shouldn't advertise this self-love on its There I am on ...
- Signs You Are Too Inward-Focused
Technology can act as a wall or a door between the organization and the customer. Too often it is becoming ...
- The Culture of Free
The Web has encouraged a belief that things can be free, or at least very cheap. It seems everyone is ...
- Truth Sells
It has rarely made sense for a business to advertise its weaknesses. Until the Web, that There is a book ...
- The Greatest Skill of the 21st Century
In an age when technology is everywhere, those who understand how technology works are easy to Those who understand how ...
- Making the Customer Your CEO
The key revolution of the Web is customer empowerment and The Web empowers the customer more than it empowers the ...
- The Web Is Still a Thrilling Place
When you get frustrated by the pressures of managing a website, look back five years. You've achieved a I meet ...
- Are You Measuring Failure?
Do you base success on measuring the volume of visitors and page Such measures may in fact reflect the failure--rather ...
- Do You Really Need Search on Your Site?
You need to decide whether the value of having search on your Web site is greater than the cost of ...
- Are You Tapping the Collective Intelligence?
Collective intelligence will be a key competitive advantage in the 21st Never before has there been a better medium to ...
- Web Navigation Is About Moving Forward
The primary purpose of Web navigation is to help people to move forward. It is not to tell them where ...
- Heart Surgery for Dummies
One of Amazon's biggest sellers in recent months is Heart Surgery for . The world is now full of Do-It-Yourself ...
- Why is Corporate Communications Viewed as Fluffy?
In many organizations, corporate communications doesn't get a lot of respect. Why is that? And more importantly: How can you ...
- Why Web Managers Are Leaders
The Web requires leadership if it is to achieve its full potential. Such leadership will rarely be given by senior ...
- Killer, not Filler: Metrics That Make the Case for Quality Content
To maximize value on your Web site, focus on your killer content. Delete the filler content. Yes, it's that simple.
- Simplicity Is Hard Work
Simple is a lot harder than it looks. Indeed, to achieve simplicity, an organization needs to be genuinely customer-focused. Extra investment ...
- Recall Ability: Web Content Versus Print Content
The Web is not a great place to win hearts and minds. It is not a great place to convince ...
- Prove the Value of Your Content With Numbers
Content management has been a fuzzy, poorly respected discipline within many organizations. Its related discipline, communications, is often seen as ...
- Knowledge Management: There's No Such Thing as a Knowledge Worker
These days, knowledge management is less about managing people and more about giving them the right goals, the right motivation ...
- Your Web Site Needs a Call to Action
The best Web sites get to the point. They ruthlessly eliminate waffle and happy talk. They focus on helping people ...
- Publish the Web Content You Can Manage
Sometimes, less is more. Especially when it comes to content. Many Web sites are too big to professionally manage with the ...
- Eleven Search Engine Optimization Tips
When it comes to optimizing your site for search and the search engines, it's important not to overcomplicate your design ...
- Links: How the Search Engines Find You (Part 2)
Search optimization is about getting links. The more links you get to your Web site, the more likely you are ...
- Links: How the Search Engines Find You (Part 1)
Search optimization is about getting links. The more links you get to your Web site, the more likely you are ...
- Search Optimization, Not Search Engine Optimization
If you want to succeed with search engines in the long term, you should not primarily focus on how the ...
- How to Create Reader Personas
You must make very difficult choices if you want your Web site to work. You can't serve everybody. If you ...
- How to Measure the Value of Your Web Content
We have wonderful tools today that will tell us the value of the physical things in our factories and offices. ...
- Web Content Management in 2004: Coming of Age
Last year, Web content came of age as more and more organizations recognized it as an asset, and not just ...
- Internet Marketing Motto: Be Useful
E-marketing is about substance over show, logic over emotion, text over graphics. In fact: good Web marketers follow the Google ...
- Do You Manage a Web Site or a Warehouse?
If you're running a Web site, you are an accidental publisher. And publishing is as much about what you don't ...
- Time to Get Serious About Metadata
Without quality metadata, a Web site cannot properly achieve its objectives.
- Managing Content Is a Process, Not a Project
We need to move from seeing our Web sites as a series of projects to managing them as a well-planned ...
- How to Implement a Content Style Guide
What’s a style guide? And why do you need one?
- The Three Core Principles of Great Web Design
The essence of a Web site is self-service. There are three core things that self-service needs to get right.
- The Secret of Managing a Successful Web Site
The Web is about self-service. To succeed in self-service, you need to really understand how your visitors think and behave, ...
- How to Make Links Work for Your Web Site
Quality links from external Web sites will help get more of the right people to your own site.
- Metadata: Seven Tips for Writing Better Keywords
The shift in how search engines treat keywords is significant. Now, they tend to ignore the keyword meta tag and ...
- What Makes for a Great Web Site?
What makes a great Web site is focus and clarity of purpose. Of course, that's easier said than done.
- Web Content Management: 10 Predictions for 2004
This is the year when Web content comes of age.
- The Intranet Gets Serious: If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It (Part 4)
Ask yourself this question: If your intranet were shut down tomorrow, would your organization become less productive, or would it ...
- The Intranet Gets Serious: Publish What You Can Manage (Part 3)
o you have a process whereby every single piece of content on your intranet gets read at least once a ...
- The Intranet Gets Serious: Making It Work (Part 2)
There are ways of making the intranet work quite well for an organization.
- The Intranet Gets Serious (Part 1)
Finally, organizations are getting serious about how they manage their intranets.
- Develop a Five-Year Plan for Your Site
Let’s dispel a big myth—that the Internet is changing so fast, it is impossible to plan for. That is absolute ...
- Choose Your Words Carefully
The words you use make a big difference on the Internet. Carefully chosen, they can keep a customer happy. Sloppily ...
- Who Is Your Web Site for, Anyway?
The Catholic Church may well have stopped saying mass in Latin. Unfortunately, many Web sites might as well be written ...
- Think the Way Your Customer Thinks
One of the biggest challenges an organization faces is to stop thinking it’s the center of the universe.
- Seven Deadly Sins of Web Writing
What’s the single most important thing that could improve the Web? It’s not broadband. It’s better writing.
- Measuring Your Web Content Management Process
Here, Gerry offers up key Web content management “measurables.”
- Measuring the Cost and Value of Your Content
ontent should be the channel through which knowledge is formalized and communicated. Increasingly, content is becoming the problem. What to ...
- Content Management: Critical Skill of the Modern Manager
The Internet has changed how organizations manage. Historically, management was focused on “walking and talking.” Today, “reading and writing” are ...
- Web Team Roles and Responsibilities: Who’s in Charge?
The Web may once have been the almost exclusive domain of techies. Today, it is increasingly the domain of communicators.
- Take Full Responsibility For Your Web Content
Here's a number of processes you can put in place to ensure that your site is both fresh and compelling.
- Metadata: An Essential Web Writing Skill
etadata is wholly misunderstood. Editors and writers tend to look at it as a technical issue. Technical people look for ...
- 10 Rules of Writing for the Web
Here are 10 rules for writing effective web content.
- The Hippie Days Are Gone
ust like the 1960s, the '90s are over. From free love to free information, it was all quite a ride. ...
- The High Cost of Running A Website
It's easy to be a publisher on the Web. It's easy to lose a lot of money, too.
- How Important Is The Look And Feel Of Your Website?
our website must look good. But it also needs to deliver the goods. Winning on the Web can be like ...
- How To Demonstrate Your Intranet Delivers Value
The days of having an intranet just because, well, it's a good idea are over. As a manager, you need ...
- Measuring the Value of Your Content
There is a classic saying in management: If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. So what's it take ...
