North American online marketing strategist David Meerman Scott encouraged online business people to “think like a publisher, not a marketer.”
He was making the point that every person who has a website is a publisher of content. By publishing good content you can attract visitors to your website.
I understand David’s point. However, I think a new website is a lot more like a garden than a book. Ideally, you want it to feel like a living thing. Something you add to. Something you trim. By attending to your website regularly, it keeps a freshness to the content that visitors notice.
It’s not just customers who notice. Google notices as well. The Google bots that scan websites detect when material is refreshed. In fact, there are advantages to condensing material and updating it. Remember, Google is looking for the best user experience and fresh material is a good sign of that.
I’m telling you this because I’ve met a lot of people who need to have everything perfect before they can go-live with a new website, blog post or webpage. I have even seen people delay a website go-live for months because they are so concerned that it isn’t perfect in some way.
As understandable as this anxiety is, there is lost opportunity in this approach. It takes a while for Google to index all your pages. It also takes a while for people to find your website. They can’t share a link to your website if you don’t go-live with it.
A book or a magazine does need careful checking and it does need accuracy because, once published, you can’t change anything.
A website is the opposite. You can make updates easily. Change a word. Change a picture. Update product information. It’s all refreshed in seconds.
So I encourage you to “think like a gardener” and get that website content live. You can go on making small improvements along the way. It’ll even be good for business.
