The brochure approach doesn’t work. We know that. So blogs, podcasts and new social content has been added to the conventional web site, but the conversation is usually buried on sites as a simple link. Why bother? Why not reverse things and make brochure content a simple link, and the social content the heart of the web page?
Sounds drastic, doesn’t it? But is it really?
Consider that large content providers like AOL, Google, and Viacom have been doing this for years. These companies know that no one really cares about their corporate structure or their video divisions. It’s engage from moment one.
Yes, they are media companies, not professional services firms, B2B organizations, equipment manufacturers, etc. But if the goal is to capture mindshare and engage more customers, then why wouldn’t you start your site experience with a conversation? And really, if a business becomes engaged in social media content creation isn’t it a publisher, too?
Consider what visitors are interested. This chart shows Cisco’s web site media consumption through Q3 last year. The blue line is the old brochure and the yellow, green and orange represents social media consumption.
After a conversation with my friend Mackenzie Lovings (who introduced me to this idea), I became convinced. As we approach the company’s second anniversary and prepare a new web site architecture, we think putting our best, most engaging features first makes the most sense. And that’s the socially enabled content, not the standard Services and About Us brochure. Other savvy companies like Maggie Fox’s Social Media Group are already doing this.
Honestly, people only check out the brochure stuff if they 1) want to consider some sort of financial, employment or marketing relationship with the company or 2) are a competitor. The standard brochure-ware will still be available for interested parties. But it will be an option for those who are interested, not mandatory boredom.
This is completely in line with what Jeremiah Owyang said about the corporate Web site, which he called “an unbelievable collection of hyperbole, artificial branding and pro-corporate content.” And, it’s true. Who wants to visit a site where that’s all you get?
Someone said several years ago that blogs would become the new Web site. One of the reasons is because blogs put the social stuff front and center, and that’s of much greater interest than a mission statement.
You make a pretty convincing point and one question I have is whether this is due to a gap between the folks in PR and Marketing? I would think that the “brochure approach” as you term it is controlled by the marketing dept. while the blog would be something like PR? My position places me in the marketing & communication dept. where I’m responsible for the online activities of our company (not corporate America, mind you, but we’re a small-medium sized group) and I wonder about how to make some sort of compromise.
I couldn’t agree more – there is a place for brochure content, and it’s no longer on the home page. Good post, and I hope more organizations put this into action.
Thanks, Paul. It seems to go all the way back to Cluetrain for me. That’s where we were told by Doc Searls there is no market for messages, but I guess now there is less of a home for messages, too.
Ken: It think it’s a disconnect in the general ethos of old school one-way, traditional communications versus the new two way conversational media that we have now. PR or marketing, doesn’t mean much tome. Both schools seem to think I belong in the other camp, so for now I’ll just be a communicator.
Ryan: ’sup. Hope you have fun at SXSW.
Hey Geoff, thanks for using our humble site as an example, and the structure has always been thus – the blog front & centre, primarily because when we started, we recognized that the most valuable thing about our “website” was the content we could provide to potential clients/colleagues. I expect that for many organizations, having to reverse-engineer their website to be a blog (or conversational in some other way) is a bit more of a challenge.
And especially thanks for the Cisco chart – great info!
Geoff, we made blogs the centrepiece of our corporate Website http://www.thornleyfallis.com/ in the autumn of 2005. The brochureware (or what little remains of it) is relegated to menu items.
We did this because we wanted people to discover and learn about our company through the eyes and thoughts of our employees. So, our home page is an aggregator of all our employee blogs and podcasts. To ensure that traffic still goes back to our employee sites, we include only the first paragraph of their posts on the company site.
The result: Google Analytics shows us that a substantial amount of our corporate Website traffic is referred to us from our employee blogs. And we’re pretty happy with that.
Joe: Thanks for those great insights. I appreciate your willingness to share performance results.
Maggie: No doubt. Everything seems harder for big companies.
does anyone knows if there is any other information about this subject in other languages?