‘Publish the Site You Can Maintain’

Web content expert Gerry McGovern gave an interesting workshop last week in Barcelona, during the Internet Global Conference. He gave some good advice on how to maximize Web content value in a time where “content is becoming strategic” for any online organization. Now, more than ever, it is a question of quality not quantity.

Therefore, the first recommendation is to “publish the site you can maintain.” Instead of focusing on publishing new content, make sure the content on your site is good. Review, update, delete, and then publish new content according to the resources you have.

For McGovern, “the only metric that matters is successful task completion,” which means that all users go to the Internet to do something and every piece of content is related to a task. Following McGovern’s rules, the next step would be to “identify the three top tasks your website performs.”

This implies a strong knowledge of the audience because the content published must answer the three most common needs for a site’s users. If we ask what are the top three tasks of online media, those could be: Give me the news in five minutes, give me your opinion, and give me the context of the news.