"Stop thinking "Launch", Start thinking "Lifecycle" for your online communications

Kristina Halvorson

A perfect companion read to Steve Krug's, "Dont Make Me Think" , Kristina Halvorson's, "Content Strategy for the Web", restates the importance of strategic planning for your online efforts and hammers home the point that content is indeed king, but it must be relevant to your target users, and really no one else.

However, we continue to see a mad rush to "launch" a site, without much pre-launch planning, including accountability assignments for who is responsible for content management.

I think the most important take-away here is the @Halvorson statement, "Stop thinking "Launch", Start thinking "Lifecycle".

Halvorson blogs at: http://blog.braintraffic.com/

Do Your Web Visitors "Get It" ?

Steve Krug's @skrug seminal work on web usability is very approachable material on a very important discipline in Integrated Marketing and Communications today.

As the subtitle, "A Common Sense Approach", and Krug's consultancy's name, "Advanced Common Sense" (http://www.sensible.com/) convey, many great design considerations today involve some simple approaches to dramatically improve your web user experiences.

"Don't Make Me Think" is the mantra here. If I cannot figure out what your site is when I land on it...I (your prospect,customer,stakeholder,etc) will move on..Can you say bounce rate? or, No Conversions for You!

Krug also points out the increasing needs for Accessibility and the advantages that CSS sheets provide for web design pros. Many book suggestions and resource links provided as well. Should be a desk reference

Create Fans Through Follow-Up...

"Not following up...is the same as filling up your bathtub without first putting the stopper in the drain." - David Frey


How many times have you heard colleagues, prospects, clients talk about the lack of follow-up by many of their current, or prospective vendors, or even some of their own team members?

Nothing more frustrating than when I am establishing connections for my own network of competencies, or recommending vendors for projects that I consult, as the lack of follow-up from their business development reps, or principals! These folks rub elbows at association meetings, Rotary Clubs, Country Clubs, etc, and prospects ask for more information, yet there is no intentional follow-up. Why Not?

Every expert commands that you do some type of reply back to a prospect by the end of the next business day...we are so connected Today, that there really is no excuse not to have someone on your team make a contact within this timeframe. Remember, prospects or clients, are not asking for a detailed proposal by the next day, but they do want to know you are interested in their business or not.

Here's a recent example, I am doing some consulting and facilitating on a web site usability and redesign for a client. When evaluating prospective technical and creative resources for the project, I was amazed at the Hubris, and lack of follow-up, that some of these "web services/marketing" firms display...Must be a huge market out there,uh??? Again, I know their "people" are attending all the proper business networking events, yet I still here on the street that "Firm XYZ" never calls back!

In closing, I suggest that your "marketing effort" needs to dial into the "customer experience" aspect of your business now. Nothing is more cost effective in marketing your business than having a bunch of @ravingfans spreading the good word about your business...