Content strategy: balancing push and pull
Posted by Manoj in Content on April 30th, 2009
I’ve been part of some website revamp projects recently, during the course of which I’ve sat through a few ‘web strategy’ meetings. Statements like these were very common then: “We want to say this…”, “We want to generate UGC (user generated content)”, “We want to put some videos..”.
Fair enough. Afterall, it is the client’s prerogative to determine what they want to communicate to their target audience, and to a great extent, how (though as web strategists focused on the complete user experience we invariably have some inputs). What surprised me though was how little attention was paid to what their audience needed/ wanted.
A solid content strategy has to find the balance between ‘push and pull’, which of course depends on who you are and the intended audience is. For example, this balance will be completely different for, say, the publisher of an information portal and a government website.
By all means, use content that pushes out your agenda and communicate what you want your audience to absorb. The key thing here is to ensure this ‘push’ is done in a manner that is effective and appeals to that audience.
At the same time, ensure that enough thought is given to creating content based on user needs and expectations that will pull them in. This requires a deep understanding of the audience; we cannot over-emphasise how important it is to get this early and right in the project lifecyle. It may mean a bit of front-loading of investment in the web strategy, but as we have seen time and again, it is well worth it.
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