Ceci N'est Pas Une Site

Repeat after me: A web site is not a communications strategy.

Almost any program the NDItech team gets called in to help with calls for a web site. Whether it's a simple "brochureware" site with basic info on an organization or a highly sophisticated data analysis system, for some audiences an organization without a web presence simply doesn't exist.

The web site can be the beginning of a project, but is definitely not the end. In many situations, the web site becomes the central focus of all efforts; this is particularly true with slick modern data visualization or citizen reporting systems. As so much time and effort is poured into one central platform, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the site is not the program. I'm sometimes in meetings where people have clearly conflated the good of the web site with the goals of the project. It's one of the problems with monitoring and evaluation for such projects; the metrics you can watch easily, such as web hits, are useless for measuring impact.

In my recent work in Georgia, we are working on what is shaping up to be a fairly slick data aggregation and analysis system on the pre-election environment, http://electionportal.ge/en/. Because everyone's focus has been on this platform, the tendency has been to lose perspective on the goals of the project, the related target audiences, and the best ways to reach them. 

Simply putting up a web site and expecting people to come flocking is a recipe for failure. If you build it, they won't necessarily come. A data-rich project can easily use a database-backed web platform as central hub for information; it's ideal for the collection, aggregation and analysis of information which can just drop directly on to the public-facing site. Unfortunately in too many programs, this is the end of the process.

How to design a communications plan is beyond the scope of this post (watch this space - teammate Hillary is working on one) but you want to think about how to repurpose your information in as many ways as possible to reach your audience.

• Posting highlights to a Facebook page for conversation
• Auto-tweeting new content
• Compiling the aggregated information with additional analysis monthly and releasing with as a report
• Building a relationship with journalists to draw upon your site as an element in their reporting
• Creating radio spots that are also distributed as podcasts that have the highlights of the week
• Making leadership available for interviews with TV stations

You also need to draw attention to yourself. Content is king, so quality information is the most important element. However, you also may want to attract audience through advertising; online ads are cheap, but hit a limited audience. Radio or TV promotions are more costly, but let you break out of the internet-connected box.

Even the free stuff isn't free; everything takes staff time, or costly software glue for integration (you can't really get wish away complexity). However, by reusing your content and pushing it out to your audiences in a variety of ways, you're going to vastly increase the power of your communications platform. And, in the end, draw more people back home to your web site. Which sometimes, is just a web site after all.