1. Define your audience.
Just who are you trying to get to visit your website? Define one primary audience. Lump everyone else into your secondary audiences. Create an audience questions document. For each audience, list every question you can think of for someone in that audience that is visiting your site? “What do you do”, “Where do I start”, “How can I contact you”.
Creating these questions will produce a powerful tool to evaluate all your content against. Does your content answer these questions? If not, then get rid of it. Use these questions to help create a sitemap (high level menu view of your site) for your website.
2. Define your goals.
Just what is it your are trying to do with your website? You can get elaborate or keep it simple. “We want to capture 25 emails per week.” “We want to have our PDF report downloaded 50 times per month.”
Be specific. Be measurable. There is plenty of tools available for tracking your web statistics, including the free Google Analytics.
3. Create a content schedule.
An important document. It simply defines the content item, person(s) responsible, and due date. You may choose to include budget as well if you plan on using a copywriter.
4. Collect and create content.
Stick to your content schedule and begin to collect and create your website content. This may include old web pages, documents, images, logos, and pdf’s.
5. Create an ongoing content strategy.
To keep your site up to date, ensure you establish publishing procedures for your business. This may be simply all content is delivered to one of your employees that has tech skills and will directly update the website. Or you may choose to have a full-time editor – copy is submitted to the editor, they do writing and then pass to a HTML/developer/designer that adds your content to your website.
