Managing your web content after a short break

It could be down to anything.  Too much work, other interests, low motivation levels, or a recent holiday.

Any of the above could be the reason(s) why you may have neglected your website content by not publishing anything new for some time.

Website content breaks – planned or otherwise – can and do happen.  After all, we’re only human.

The important thing to do, after a long or short content break, is to get back into the swing of working on your content as quickly as you can.

I’ve rounded up a few tips to help you – and these will come in especially handy for those of us who have enjoyed or are enjoying a run of spring public holidays…

1) Reconnect and rediscover the fire

Spend a few minutes reading through your published web content.

It will help to reconnect you with your website and topic, and help you to remember what your plans were and how you can build on them.

Reading through your content will also help you to ‘rediscover the fire’ and by this I mean, the fire or hunger that drove you to set up your website or blog in the first place.

The content you read will, in all likelihood, have been published at a time when you were at your most positive and most driven.

Now is the time to feed off that positive energy and use it to fire up new content, new ideas and to push new boundaries.

2) Get planning!

Motivation can often spark a thousand ideas, but here is one old but essential idea that will bear fruit time and time again.  Planning.

Look at your website anew and think about how you can plan your content so that it works in the best way it can for your readers.

For example, now that winter is over, a spring theme may work well or any other appropriate theme for that matter.  Remember it’s your content, but it needs to be relevant to your readers.

Use what you know about your target audience, and feed that intelligence into your themed website content.

If you don’t know what your audience wants, just ask…

3) Ask your customers

One of the best ways to give your customers what they want is to ask them, and deliver it.  It’s a simple but effective technique that you can use time and again.

You will probably find that you have many repeat visitors who never contact you and never leave comments on your blog posts.  But those same visitors would be more than willing to share their views if you were to ask for them directly.

You don’t need to do anything overly complicated to get the inside track from your customers.  Put together a selection (keep it short!) of questions and post your questions:

• on a page on your website
• in your enewsletter or regular customer communication, or
• via a link to an online survey on your website or email messages

Give your visitors enough time – around a month – to respond.

Don’t forget to share the survey results in an interesting way so that those who’ve taken the time to respond (and even those who haven’t), can see what sort of feedback you’ve received.

To add a little extra interest, consider (as long as you have permission first) including a quote or two from the responses you’ve received.

Post written by DEBBIE THOMAS on 26 April 2011.

Image by: Susanne Nilsjo