Small Businesses Need Online Content Management
We often find that with a small business comes a small budget. As a small business, a lot of your energy and funds will, no doubt, be dedicated to retaining your loyal customers. This means, serving their needs with great products and excellent customer service. This is to be expected. However, too often small businesses lose sight of marketing. Everything has moved to the Internet, and it's all but impossible to find solid, local help for creating (or expanding) a web presence. We realize it can be a sacrifice to find the funds, but we also believe it's an investment more than anything. A local web developer managing your site is expensive and unreliable, so every business should consider switching to online content management.
It began about five years ago, when huge corporations got fed up with coding and restructuring their entire web platform every time they had a new need. So they used their own development teams to create online content management systems. The days of hard-coding every line of text, every image, every tool instantly disappeared. Suddenly web developers had programs that structured every piece of digital information. Webmasters could edit, create, and store information in the blink of an eye, which reduced costs tremendously and allowed organic growth.
It is unlikely that your local book store or coffee shop has the funds to hire a full-time webmaster, but because everyone knows the importance of an online presence, they either hire a local developer or create a generic site using some online template. Problems abound with both. Those template-driven sites typically look "cookie-cutter", not drawing much appeal to visitors and next to impossible to customize. For a large price, local web designers can create a beautiful site, but businesses have to then rely on them for any change-altered store hours, uploading pictures, special news and events, etc.
The only solution is for small businesses to find the means to perform online content management themselves. A number of open source online content management systems have appeared. This relieves businesses of the necessity to create one from scratch. For non-technical businessmen, though, learning to master these systems is about as daunting as creating them. Fortunately, consulting firms have popped up that help businesses convert their existing websites onto a content management system. With experience in these open source programs, consultants not only assist in the content migration but train business owners to manage their sites independently. Of course, this consultation isn't free, but considering the importance of an online presence and the high costs of most web developers, it's negligible and will save in the long run.
Duo Consulting specializes in establishing online content management and a social media marketing strategy. Duo Consulting helps accounting, architecture, financial, law and other professional service firms make the most of their online presence.
Category Article Businesses, Content, Management, Online, Small
