In some recent conversations with Andy Seidl of MyST Technology Partners, (Disclaimer: Their technology runs this blog), I came to the thought that the whole practice of creating a corporate website is passe. Unless you require a shopping cart, in which case your must have an item catalog that you would like to exhibit, there is really no particular need for a typical, static, plain html corporate site. Think about it like this: The average corporation spends $1000 to $2000 per page for a corporate site of roughly 50 pages. That's $50,000, if you catch a good deal! What are you getting for this? Essentially, the ability to forget about your online presence. Once the site is built, everyone gets back to work, no longer worrying about not being able to point to a credible online presence. In other words, the corporate site is like a flag planted on the moon: Yes we have been there, but there is no other signs of life. Many corporate sites don't even have the ability to capture an interested party's particulars. So, come and look, but don't let us know who you are. Seems strange - like what would you think if a stranger just showed up in your office, stared at you for a few minutes and then left? (OK, we have all had strange work mates - that's not what I mean). But we do need an online presence, you're thinking. Sure, of course, without question. Look at this blog that you are currently reading: This is online presence to the nth degree. The ability to post dynamic content, provide a comments channel for readers, capture their information if they would like to talk in person, feed them new content automatically through RSS, and so much more. This is not a static site, this is a corporate advertorial. This gives you the ability to speak directly to people who seek what you have to say. They are interested, believe it or not, to hear about what you do, how you do it and why you do it. You can also provide them with other interesting content here. For example, if you are a law firm with a patent law practice, what better place to talk about your expertise and also aggregate interesting articles about patent law from other sources than your website. On a typical site it would mean creating an article and sending it to a web developer. Three weeks later, and many $ later, it would appear in your website. Now consider a blogsite like this one: Write your own topical post for the blog, decide when to publish it, aggregate other interesting articles about the same subject, create links within the post to other sources, and when it becomes public it will automatically feed into the online world of your readership. You are now a leader in you field. How's that work for you? The more I think about this idea of blog as primary internet presence, or primary website, the more interesting it becomes. Now I must say that SightLines did not follow this path. When we began blogging, almost 3 years ago now, it was anything but a mainstream practice. In fact, blogging still has a bit of a bad reputation because of the lunatic political fringe that tends to take more advantage of the medium than others. But this is really starting to change over the last 6 months or so. More and more mainstream writers have entered the medium. The corporate world will follow, and sooner would be better than later. I am not sure what we will do with our primary website, but we'll probably keep it and continue to work this blog and the primary site together. After all, it certainly does not hurt your internet presence to have both a primary and a blogsite. The two do wonders for your organic search results, to be sure. So if you already have a corporate site and do not want to kill it, then I would say that's not a problem. Keep both. But if you are just getting started and do not yet have your $50,000 corporate site then I would tell you to hold on their big guy. You might want to take a look at what's next in internet technology. There will soon come a day when not having a blogsite will be akin to not having a website at all. |
