Goals Written Are Dreams Achieved

When I'm not thinking about websites or content strategy, I'm usually knitting. In fact, I've just started a knitting blog where I share knitting-related thoughts and patterns.

Today my worlds intersected a bit. I came across a wonderful post entitled "Goals Written Are Dreams Achieved." While I'm not planning to sell my knitted objects on Etsy anytime soon, I thought the post really captured best practices for every association, corporation, nonprofit, or entrepreneur.

The post gave four tips for writing and measuring goals. I've paraphrased them and added a fifth.

1. Write them as positive, declarative sentences.
2. Be detailed.
3. Share your goals with others, maybe in a blog post or on Twitter.
4. Track the progress of your goals.
5. Review and refine them on a regular basis.

 For a website, content strategy is key to enabling your business to meet its goals.

Content strategy -- the who, what, when, where, why, and how of content

People come to your site to learn something or do something, and your content strategy needs to reflect that you know what they come for and know how to help them do it.

Sounds easy...but it's actually not. In fact, often the cleanest, easiest-looking solutions actually were the most challenging to develop. Keep in mind that those challenges are absolutely worth tackling!

The question "what is content strategy" seems to be out there in the ether more than I've ever seen it. My take on it is that content strategy is the who, what, when, where, why, and how of content.

• Who will be creating the content? Do they know how to write effectively for online consumption?
• What content do your site visitors need in order to do what they came for?
• When: How often should you publish new content? How often will you promote a particular piece of content?
• Where should it live? What section of your site houses the information? Where will you promote it -- on your site, on Facebook/Twitter, in your e-newsletters?
• Why: Do the folks responsible for writing and promoting the content understand both the business goals of the content, as well as users' goals?
• How: Do you have a content management system -- both CMS technology and the related business processes -- to to get the information posted online efficiently and effectively? 

So, content strategy involves several different areas of your organization: content creators, communicators, marketing, and technology. All must be aligned in order for the content -- and the effort behind it -- to succeed.

An open letter to mobile sites

Dear mobile site,

Most of the time, frankly, you’re awful. All too often, you don’t let me do what I came to the site to do -- something that your full site lets me do pretty easily. You present a small handful of options, but not the one I’m looking for. And to be honest, you’re ugly. I definitely appreciate good design on a website, so using you is just not a very pleasant experience.

Yesterday, I started the day as I usually do, checking email on my iPhone before getting out of bed. I got an offer from a clothing retailer for 20% off if I shopped during the week. When I clicked on the link, there were choices to see women’s, children’s, or men’s items. I was looking for women’s clothing – but there was some kind of overlay welcoming me to the mobile site, and it blocked my ability to choose women’s clothes (which I strongly suspect is this retailer’s primary line of business). I clicked on the children’s clothing link, and there, all I could do was drill down, not go to women’s clothes. Oh well – I guess they didn’t really want me to shop with them online. Effective mobile experience? I don’t think so!!

Then on my way home from work, I got a weekly update from a nonprofit career site. In order to see the open positions in Illinois, I clicked through to the site and it asked me if I wanted to go to the mobile site. I’ve clicked “no” each time I have visited the site, but apparently it’s too much for this site to remember that option. I got a request to remember my location – why in the world does this site need to know where I am? I clicked “no” once again. And in paging through the openings in Illinois, I had to carefully expand the page so I clicked on the “next” link vs. the one to the mobile site – yet again. There is an option to see all openings from Illinois at once, but it doesn’t work. Major fail!

I don’t mind scrolling around a “real” site on my phone. It’s a mini-computer, after all – not a Blackberry circa 1996. Bandwidth isn’t really an issue, and real sites have information in predictable places, and a real, defined user experience.

So mobile site, don’t get in my way – and give me the option to decline using you, permanently. If you choose to not do that, I will choose not to visit you.

Thanks for listening.

Social media -- can't live without it, can't keep up

My organization is hiring a social media manager. We've decided to truly participate and engage with the people and online conversations related to us and our issues. I've been working on this effort for many months, and have stepped up my efforts to learn what's going on on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Ning sites, MyBlogLog, Plaxo, and a myriad of blogs. I avidly use del.icio.us. I haven't yet explored Digg enough. I've hooked the tools together where it makes sense, and I rely on both push and pull methods of knowing what's going on. But it could easily be my full-time job to just read everything -- and keeping up with these discussions and links is not my primary job responsibility, by any means.

We social media-ites are certainly a communicative bunch, and while I am gregarious and extroverted by nature, I sometimes want to ask people to just be quiet for a while and let me catch up!

While that obviously is not going to happen, I just needed to share that.

Finding time to blog

I've found it challenging to make time to post to this blog. What is blog-worthy? What is worth spending the time on? I guess I'll try and think about it more, post more regularly and see what happens.

Stay tuned.....

If you have ideas on how to get inspired to blog, please let me know!

Real estate book created in record time

Yesterday I was introduced to Steve Kantor, who conceived the idea of a book gathering the thoughts of 1,000+ REALTORS® about how to stay successful in a down market. He pulled the book's contents together in five (!) days. The ebook was available for download within one day, and the printed book will be available as of Friday. I commend Steve and his team for the effort, although it remains to be seen whether the information is useful....

Tired in Las Vegas

I've been in Las Vegas since Sunday, primarily for the National Association of REALTORS® conference and also to attend the Word of Mouth Marketing Association Summit (warning -- the WOMMA site talks!).

As we come to the close of Thursday, I'm tired. I've had more drinks than usual, slept fitfully, had 12+ hour days (filled with enjoyable, interesting activities, but long nonetheless), and have hardly breathed outdoor air.

I'll be glad to get home.....

Real Estate BloggerCon tomorrow!

Tomorrow (Nov. 12, 2007) I'll be hosting NAR's first-ever BloggerCon, along with the Center for REALTOR Technology, at NAR's annual conference in Las Vegas.

It will take place from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. in the Venetian Hotel, in the Bloggers Lounge on Level 4 - Zeno 4605.

If you're a REALTOR® or a REALTOR® association executive and you blog, please come and meet the other bloggers and share your thoughts.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Adding more widgets to the blog

Look at the right column to see what I've been twittering (tweeting?) about, as well as what I'm listening to....in case you're interested. What are you listening to/twittering about, and do you post that information on your blog? I'd love to know your reasons either way.

Web standards and governance

I've convened my team in our DC office for a "content summit," my term for an intensive session to:

• refine our content strategies/standards/guidelines/policies
• standardize the job that our content strategists do between offices and with various departments throughout our association
• position the team to be able to govern the site more effectively. Lisa Welchman will be working with us on this final piece.
  

We'll be posting the site's standards online -- I'll post the link when it's up.

After a glass of wine and a relaxing dinner, I'll be ready for a third day of interesting discussions tomorrow.

CNN.com 2.0

Check out the new CNN.com, just relaunched today! It's "as an enhanced multimedia site - packed with web 2.0 features such as recommendations and user generated content," according to Read/Write Web. Many of the standards and ideas that it implemented are the same ones we are using or planning to use on REALTOR.org, which is validating:

• Streaming video vs. forcing downloads
• Playing streaming video in Flash, vs. Windows Media Player
• "Integrated multimedia storytelling," which we are taking baby steps toward doing

Some of the site's other new features are ones only in our minds at the moment, including Ajax; "we recommend" and "hot topics" dynamically generated for text and video content; and multiple opportunities for readers to engage with articles, video, and categories.

A revolution in corporate communications is coming your way soon

Debbie Weill, in her BlogWrite for CEOs blog, wrote about a phenomenon that I've been watching for quite some time. (I wrote an article about this back in January 2005, "To make your website work, transform your communicators from writers to editors.") The blogosphere and the rise of social media have made this transformation happen faster and more fully than I expected, though!

12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know

Thanks to C. David Gammel, whose High Context Consulting blog is a must-read for association communicators and Web folks, for pointing to this useful post about the legalities of running a blog. The post covers

1. dos and don'ts of paid blog posts (you should disclose them)
2. whether deep linking is legal (it is, as long as it doesn't violate copyright)
3. using images and thumbnails (make sure you don't use images without permission)
4. laws protecting you from stolen content
5. domain name trademark issues
6. handling private data about your readers
7. ownership and rights to user-generated content
8. your responsibility in monitoring comments
9. basic blog-related tax laws
10. limited liability laws and incorporating
11. laws about spam and unsolicited emails
12. bloggers and journalism shield laws
    

Are you all a-Twitter?

I've signed up for Twitter. Not sure whether it'll be useful, but it's worth a shot. If you want, please add me as a friend: http://twitter.com/hilarymarsh.

Diagram of a blog

This image from today's NY Times is all too true! Reminds me of the old light bulb joke about email lists: http://monster-island.org/tinashumor/humor/interlight.html...

How associations can use blogs effectively

Whew! I just finished an article for FORUM Magazine, the monthly publication of the Association Forum of Chicago. I learned a ton and got reenergized about this blog. When the article is live, I'll share it here.

Because of that article, I'm now addicted to several blogs that I was a casual visitor to before:
Charlene Li's blog sharing Forrester analysts' insights
Logic+Emotion from David Armano
The Kinja feed of posts from several smart association communication issues blogs
John Bell's Digital Influence Mapping Project

What are your marketing challenges and goals for 2007?

Nonprofit communicators, you're invited to take a short survey created by Nancy Schwartz of Getting Attention. Nancy's articles on how nonprofits can succeed through effective marketing are fresh and insightful, and she wants the community's input to make her articles even better. It's only seven questions, including:

• Looking back at 2006, what was your biggest disappointment or frustration? And what was your greatest success?
• What are your top three communications goals for 2007?
• As you look ahead to 2007, please rate these marketing and communications challenges as they relate to your organization. (checklist)

The survey is located at What are your marketing challenges and goals for 2007?.

Excellent post on technical problem-solving

Michael Stein, who blogs about nonprofit technology issues, offered an important insight about problem solving: "when several problems start up at once, odds are they are related." The example he gave was about connectivity issues, but it's a principle that is relevant in many other situations. Thanks for the insight, Michael!

My new role

I am now the managing director of REALTOR.org, overseeing the site's content, technology, design, information architecture, and metrics. Guess I'll be busy!

The site has 670,000 registered users and receives more than 1.3 million visits per month. We have ambitious goals for it, including better content management functionality, more multimedia, and user-generated content -- stay tuned!

Women blogging

I've heard about this community for quite a while, but just took the plunge and joined today. We'll see where it goes for me....