Nowadays, for organizations on a lean budge who can’t afford to pay a webmaster and communications staff, the main challenge of maintaining an excellent website is organizational, not technical.
In trying to put up a great website the first thing people think about is: Who has the technical chops to put it together for us? However, since inexpensive web site editing software and web services are getting easier and easier to use, this hurdle isn’t so high anymore.
Consequently, the main challenge now is not designing and building a site, but maintaining it over the long haul: finding people to write articles, shoot video, take pictures; and finding other people to post this information.
Of course, the posting could be done by one person, but one person is likely to burn out after a while, or get so involved with other things that he/she can’t carry on.
So, here are the steps toward a website solution for organizations on a lean budget:
1. Convince your members that maintaining an excellent website requires a team effort. This is the most important step!
2. Choose a website editing instrument (software or web service) that’s inexpensive and simple enough for average people to use.
3. Recruit and train at least a small team of members who are willing to spend time learning and practicing posting.
4. Get a commitment from the members that they will provide fresh content: brief articles, announcements, pictures, videos, sound files, etc., so that the posters can put it on the site, keeping it attractive and informative.