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Building and Managing a Successful CPD Website

Introduction

Building a website that works doesn’t happen overnight. It requires careful planning, the use of professional publishing techniques, and much elbow grease in its marketing. Mixing metaphors the process is like pushing water uphill until you reach the summit where the water turns to ice/snow and then it becomes like rolling a snowball down the other side as success breeds success. This Checklist considers the planning, professional publishing procedures and marketing techniques which work. It uses as a case study the development of PlanningMatters (www.planningmatters.co.uk) a website developed and managed on behalf of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) – a sister site of LearningMatters (www.learningmatters.com) on which this module is published.

The purpose of the RTPI site is to make available on-line CPD learning materials to the Institute’s 19,000 members. In its first full year 2003 this site had 60 planning and 200 business and management modules, a distribution list of 2,000 RTPI members, and a monthly hit rate which averaged less than 500 individual site visits. By the end of 2008 the content had risen to over 600 modules, the distribution list to over 12,000, and the monthly individual visits to more than 20,000.

Background

Planning

Defining a niche market and determining content which is going to be of interest and value to that market is a first and vital step in creating a successful website. Niche doesn’t necessarily have to mean small – take the example of Facebook and Wikipedia - niche is where users share a common interest with other users. Content need not come in one format but should be of immediate interest and share a common structure so that users become familiar with that structure and gain confidence in what they are going to get when accessing the site. The portfolio of content also needs to be sufficiently broad to make the site worthwhile. There is little value in selecting an online business and management learning library and being unable to find content relating to, for example, interpersonal skills, performance management or budgeting.

In the case of the RTPI there was distinct advantage in that the site came with the credibility of a professional body so that its members were initially willing to try and have faith in its content which was authored by fellow members. Other sites have to create this credibility and that can be a long battle. It is why professional publishing techniques are so important. With PlanningMatters we used the web-based practice of blogging to develop a legal commentary to create interest and value. The introduction of this feature brought about a rapid increase in word of mouth marketing as the profession is peculiarly reliant on up-to-date information about recent case law. This technique not only adds information it also provides the means of stimulating visual interest by using moving words or pictures on the home page.

Building an email distribution list should be a primary part of the planning process. Word of mouth is the most powerful builder but word of mouth only occurs as ‘the water reaches the summit’ and is dependant on a successful marketing plan for that to occur. Capturing users’ details and using these users in the form of a pyramid to create additional users is the key to building a successful list.

With the PlanningMatters site there was the inbuilt advantage of being able to use the RTPI’s annual membership letter to push for new visitors. The introduction of the legal commentary, however, doubled the size of the distribution list in six months as word of mouth marketing gained momentum.

Publishing techniques

For some, the advent of web-based information meant the death of professional publishing. On the contrary, in our experience, the techniques of publishing – commissioning of suitable authors, peer group review of content, copy editing of primary manuscripts and then proofing them prior to publication - have become increasingly important.

The RTPI project involved more than 200 authors, a further 200 subject matter experts and scores of editors and proof readers. Successful management of this volume of people and the myriad of individual tasks must be supported by robust and efficient procedures and project management.

This is where 21st century technology can make a profound difference. The RTPI project benefitted from Echelon’s content management system and authoring toolkit to automate many of the tasks that historically were laborious and time consuming. These systems were developed to assist everyone those involved concentrate on their specific value-adding activities without being hindered by worrying about the process. The result: more efficient, faster, more satisfying, more economical delivery of professional content. (need to mention specific features such as automatic indexing, workflow, pagination, templates, version control).

If either the accuracy of the grammar and spelling used is not up to scratch then expect to get a deluge of emails from loyal users. For example the misspelling of license (sic) in one document provoked over 20 notes of protest.

In building and managing a successful website accuracy needs to be a watchword.

Online marketing

Search Engine Optimisation

If your new website has not been properly optimized for the search engines, then this is a necessary first step you must take. Ensure that your new site has integrated the appropriate keywords into all the fundamental areas of the site. Without this critical step of optimizing your site, no level of promotion will help you get those search rankings. Ideally the optimization of your site should occur during the planning and building stages, but if not be sure to get this completed as soon as possible.

Email marketing

Regular communication with your users is paramount. Even the most loyal user needs reminding of why they have found the site of value in the past and why it is currently interesting. For example, on average 12,000 of the 20,000 monthly visits occur within 48 hours of the fortnightly sent out to the RTPI distribution list. Here is a list of five imperatives in designing your email:

  1. Release titles should be short and snappy, yet informative, to attract a reader’s interest. Remember that most, if not all, recipients will only ever see this element of the release in their email application. Google and other search engines will use the title of the release when indexing where it is republished. Here is an example of an RTPI site release sent out this year:

New Checklist: Retaining Customers in an Economic Downturn http://www.planningmatters.co.uk/idx/25270/index.html#e25270 From just 8 words and 58 characters (including spaces) we can establish:

  1. Use multimedia to enhance your story. Try to include an image or other accompanying information whenever relevant or appropriate. This will allow the receiver to produce a more attractive piece of content for their readers and also images are often searched for specifically, e.g. via Google Images, which means there are more ways that your story will be found.

  2. Use hyperlinks to benefit you and the readers of your news in a number of ways:

  1. Include a 'Notes to Editors' or 'About' (the company) section at the bottom of the release. This should include any information not mentioned in the release itself, for example when the company was launched, where the headquarters are located etc. Effectively a brief overview of who you are. But note the use of the word “brief” and try and keep it to around 100-150 words.

  2. Contact details should always be included so that any receiver of your news knows who to contact if they want more information.

Search Engine Submission

These days search engines will find your site on their own, and submitting to them is not necessary. If you feel you must submit your site to the engines, submit it only once and shortly after the site goes live. In order to help the search engines fully spider your new site, the best thing you can do in terms of submissions, is to create and submit an XML sitemap. Submit this sitemap to your Google Webmaster Tools account, and also be sure to include a call to it within your robots.txt file by adding the following line including a complete path to your sitemap:

Sitemap: http://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml

Link Building

There are a number of ways you can work to increase your back links. Links are one of those strategic tools that will never be a bad investment. Today they play a significant role in search rankings for most industries, especially in Google. While the future will almost undoubtedly still see search value in links, even if that value declines, or disappears entirely, quality links can still help drive traffic as well, and a strong base of inbound links can deliver you customers well into the future. Explore the different ways to build links to your site. A steady progressive increase in inbound links will help Google look positively in your direction. Do not be afraid of reciprocal links either. If you are trading with highly relevant websites to your industry, then you should have nothing to be afraid of.

Social Media

Promotion largely consists of building links and becoming recognized by the search engines, but in order to help you build those links, getting your name and brand out there can really do wonders. By increasing awareness of your site and product, the public will often help create the buzz you need, and often, this can result in fresh links to your website. To help get your site in the eyes of as many people as possible, take a look into Social Media and consider creating profiles on some of the popular platforms. This can include creating a YouTube account and uploading instructional, informational, or interesting product videos. You can set up a Facebook page, and work to build a community around your product. Create a profile page on Squidoo, MySpace, and Flickr, amongst many others. These pages often act as backlinks to your site, and also help spread awareness. Be sure to keep your social endeavours updated regularly or any viewership you have will dwindle as people lose interest. If you are able to build a strong following, this can result in many individuals linking to your site and spreading the word, resulting in long term benefits for you and your site. The key to the use of social media is to keep it relevant, not identical - you are not looking to create a mirror of your site.

Useful sites

www.realwire.com/ from which some of the helpful tips for developing online email marketing / press releases have been derived

www.wilsonweb.com/articles/checklist.htm from which have been derived some of the helpful tips in how to promote your website

PlanningMatters, the online information library published by Echelon Learning on behalf of Royal Town Planning Institute

LearningMatters, Echelon Learning’s online warehouse of business and management content