First 2013 IT Item Checklist for Small Business: Your Website.

You’ve learned by now successful website management requires more time than originally budgeted.

It becomes overwhelming and after a while results in disorganization and failure.

Welcome to the club. The most successful online businesses have experienced this.

Tools and resources to mass market your website gets better and better every day, month and year-to-year. ProVergent Strategies wants to show you successful website management can be achieved for any small business or non-profit group.

Newsrooms Show How to Manage Sites

Manage your website like a successful newspaper, television or radio station.

What you have in common with them:

1.     Transmitting news and information
2.     Non-stop assignments
3.     Non-stop production requirements
4.     Quality assurance
5.     Deadlines

Dan Caesar of the St. Louis Post Dispatch is a section editor and often says, “It’s amazing how we’re able to put out a paper every day.”

They do it because the staff multi-tasks. They’re putting out information several times an hour but at the same time publishing a daily paper. Content they create online often is different that what you see in the paper the next day.

Newsrooms create news because everyone contributes to producing new content.They’re now required to also market what they created using digital media.

Newsroom trial and error the past decade created successful website management. 

Here’s how they do it:

Assign Responsibility – Designate people to be leaders.

Here are the leadership positions for successful website management

Content Editor

One person who decides what is relevant site content and is the last editor of content and responsible for its publication. A content editor should also assign stories.

New, relevant, exciting content creation more frequently published is the most important success of a website.

Media Editor

One person enhances content with relevant pictures and videos. Every piece of content should have pictures and/or video included.  Pictures and video with content boosts a website’s visibility and credibility

Engineer

One person is responsible for the technical requirements of the website and social media. CMS (Content Management System) sites have plugins and extensions that make work automatic. However, they’re only good if they’re formatted correctly because many of them require personal settings.

Master these three things and you’ll start seeing the results you want from your content and website.

Successful Website Management Involves Everybody

There’s so much news and information available to tell people. No one person can do it themselves.

Everyone should be involved creating content. You’ll get a better editorial mix of news and information.

Great content goes nowhere unless people know about it.

Everyone contributes by advertising new content in social media. Not just from the website social media accounts, but their personal pages as well. That gives a personal touch people want to see and is proven to get attention.

Successful Website Management Requires Patience

Successful website management doesn’t happen overnight. ProVergent Strategies advises clients it takes between three month to a year to get results.

It never happens right away because successful website management requires being consistent day after day with discipline, adjustment and self-criticism for quality.

It takes time because errors will be made. Everyone successful online has made errors and only got to be the best by learning what works and what doesn't.

It’s ok to make mistakes! Robert Hyland, the late general manager of KMOX radio in St. Louis who practically invented talk radio as a format always said, “Make errors in commission rather than omission.”

After you master discipline, consistence and quality, then you can enhance successful website management by refining the method of team communication.

Improving content can be accomplished by assigning people to be section editors who specialize in particular niches like news, entertainment, sports, calendar management, etc.

If you do, it requires each person to dedicate more time. Successful website management also means mastering time management.

You can create more efficiency with social media auto-generated messages when new website content is published.  It will create more social message advertising than a the standard per person method.

This would be an assignment for your website engineer.

Warning: Auto posting on social media sometimes can be considered spamming and result in problems such as account suspension and termination.

ProVergent Strategies advises clients to never auto-generate messages in the early months of mastering successful website management. Compelling content is created by people, not machines.

Google and other search engines no longer search for website meta keywords. Too many people abused the process for years trying to game the system. Search engines now reward sites with higher rankings when they see new content published more frequently that is unique and contains  top production values.

Please note being unique is important. Search engines now can easily find copy-and-paste content and will penalize a website for doing it.

In summary, master the basic successful website management plan:

Everyone creates content then advertises it socially after it’s published.

Assign the responsibilities of editing and engineering.

Now for the tip that makes this happen that you won’t find anywhere else:

Everyone must educate themselves for all things important in online publishing.

The number one excuse I hear is, “I don’t know how to do it and no one has taught me how to do it.”

There are thousands of articles and courses online, free just by searching that can educate you for a particular task. Many software programs and applications such as content management systems (CMS) plugins and extensions have tutorials.

A free tip how to better educate yourself:

Search YouTube. Any crackpot can write an article – many just copy and paste what someone else wrote.

Did you know YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine? It’s owned by Google. That’s why video use in article publishing is important.

The real experts are those who take the time to create tutorial videos. My mentors were Gideon Shalwick and Leslie Samuel. They have YouTube videos and I recommend you check them out.

Want an example of a dynamically-updated website? See www.provergent.com and the special feature on the front page to get customer information.