Many organizations are unsure of what their website’s purpose is. For some, it is a repository of information where an organization can tell their whole brand story. But websites are more than that. For SMPA, websites are considered the center of a comprehensive digital strategy. Ideally, a website is the place where the ‘big picture’ lives, but it’s not a static entity. It is a portal that should always be evolving and must be linked to all the other elements of your digital strategy. There must be connective tissue between the website and your newsletters, your social media presence and any other digital tools you are considering. Your website should be a central information hub for all of your organization’s digital resources.

Which brings me to blogs. Blogs are content and they have 3 functions:

1. They ensure fresh content on your website;
2. They can be automated into newsletters and
3. They help your search engine optimization efforts when you use key words and terms in your text and photo descriptions.

While the latter is a behind the scenes part of digital strategy, blogs are a key function that you want to have on your website and one that you want to be able to update and maximize independently.

Getting back to connective tissue. The glut of information on social media poses a challenge to organizations who have invested in it but aren’t necessarily sure it is worth the time and energy it takes to ‘feed the beast’. By positioning the website in the center of the content universe and maintaining a fresh content stream on your website, you can create social media posts that link audiences back to the ‘big picture’. No need to clutter social media posts with tons of copy. A short and sweet video or a great photo with a link might be all you need to start creating a flow of traffic from social to your website. From there you can easily track the flow of traffic from social to your website and do more of what is working and phase out the types of content that are not driving traffic.

And newsletters? They work. Beyond being informative to your readers, they can work for you on an audience flow level. We encourage clients to create blog posts and either automatically generate newsletters or create them in an email newsletter platform and offer teaser copy with ‘read more’ links to the website. Again, you’ll be able to track audience flow from the newsletter to the website which will give you important feedback about content that is interesting and important to your audiences.

Last word on this. Be kind to your audiences. Keep your blog posts short and sweet, make them interesting, have excellent photography and be prepared to modify your strategy when what you are offering falls flat.