Why is it that so many people in business think that their website needs to be all about them? I’m looking mostly at media organizations or service providers here. It’s not about your botched haircut, your promotion to buy me gas for a month or even which 20 songs you’re playing over and over again right now. It’s about what your listeners want. This is going to be a short post, because it has a short message. It’s not about you! Believe it or not, you’re not going to gain market share by writing stories about how cool/hip/funny/sincere you or your organization is. You’re going to gain market share by building a brand around your listeners and making them the center of your universe. Not the other way around.
Don’t believe me? How are your organic traffic numbers? Do you even know what organic traffic is? It’s traffic from search engines from people that found you by searching for something besides you. It’s the way you go from driving traffic to your site by cracking a mic, to driving ears to your station by putting stuff on the web.
If you’re currently thinking about, budgeting for a website redesign in 2010, I implore you to take the money you were going to spend on a designer or a developer, and instead do some research with your audience to find out what you could actually do to serve them in the future. Chances are, if your listeners are interested in something, then you have an opportunity to find a way to serve them. Not to sound all Yoda or anything, but “Become the Hub”!
