Brown bag recap: Keep Your Website Relevant

Yesterday we kicked-off our free brown bag series with a workshop on keeping your website relevant. NPower trainer Christin Boyd and web consultant Patrick Tewson led the full conference room through a high level discussion of successful web content maintenance strategies.

I was pleased to hear them start the discussion by encouraging people to ground their content in their overall communications strategy by identifying key audiences and constantly asking yourself, “Is this content bringing us closer to reaching our organizational goals?” As a member of the NPower team that is responsible for web updates and social media content generation, I am keenly aware of how easy it is to lose focus of the “why” and “who” of online communications, so having that reminder is always nice.

The presenters shared some great tips and tools, including a spreadsheet to help content managers think through updates, track contact information for contributing subject matter experts, and set dates for evaluation and archiving of content. The spreadsheet is available for download, along with the slide deck from the workshop, in the knowledge center on our website. You can also follow the tweets from the day by searching the event hashtag - #npnwbb - on Twitter.

If you weren’t able to make it to the brown bag, but are looking to learn how to keep your website fresh, join us for our training next Thursday – Web Content Maintenance. This training goes into much further detail (3.5 hours’ worth) regarding the effective processes for creating, editing, formatting, publishing, and archiving content.  It’s offered at a low rate – just $35 – thanks to generous funding from Adobe. The class will also be offered on October 6 and December 5 in case you can’t make it next week.

As part of our community education efforts, we’ll be continuing our free lunchtime brown bag series with the next installment, Get Smart About Smartphones, on August 24. Register today to save your spot. Did I mention it was free? We’ll even provide dessert!

Thanks to everyone who came to the brown bag and contributed to the discussion. See you next time!

- Mandi Moshay