What’s new?

You’ve seen it a hundred times, and may even be a culprit — you have a news or blog section of your site, and the information there is out of date. And not a week, two weeks, or even a month. We’re talking about two to three months, even a year out of date. As a viewer, you second-guess what you’ve read so far, wondering if it’s still relevant, while as a website owner you might be throwing your hands up in the air.

We certainly sympathize with business owners that neglect their news sections in order to focus on really pressing business concerns, but it’s still no way to leave your website. It’s better to have no date attached to anything than dates for an event that’s already happened (“See us at the 4th of July Event!” while snow is flying..), but far better is finding a way to keep these things up to date to show that your company is vibrant and active, and that you really do have a lot going on.

The key to keep news active is to have the tools available to make it easy. Of course you’re going to neglect a news item if it takes an hour or more, or if you have to work with a challenging person in order to so. What’s often worked for us is to build content management systems for news, press releases, and events which clients can manage as easily as sending an email. Blogs, by their nature, are easy to update. Having the tools will make the process of updating this key area of your site easier, but it’s only half the battle.

The other half is, of course, coming up with content. And what really do you have to write about? Probably more than you think. Some of the things which work are:

  • Trade shows or conferences you’ll be attending
  • New hires or promotions in the company
  • Opening new offices or moving
  • Expanding or enhancing your service offerings
  • New credentials earned by people in your office
  • Appearances of your company in the media

Once you start brainstorming a list, you’ll see that the prospective topics are quite robust. And this is only finding news from within your company — you can also integrate RSS feeds to serve news from relevant industry sources and freshen up your homepage content that way.

Even with the tools and the story, adding news may still be a challenge, but it’s a worthwhile practice that will improve the image your company projects to potential customers as well as keep your site fresh in search engine indexes. And you can always hire our staff copywriters manage your content.

See how Hall can help increase your demand.