The Idea
Earlier this year I presented at the Art of Digital along side representatives from Tate Galleries and Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. At the time they both commented that there was a trend to develop content where your audience resided on the web.
Fractured Websites
Since then I have seen this trend increase in pace and grow. But what on earth am I talking about?
Previously in online marketing, it has all been about creating your website as the hub of information about your brand and presenting relevant content for users online. Therefore it’s been about driving traffic to your website and achieving your goals online that way. Whether those goals were increase brand awareness, increase in online sales or enquiries.
With the growth of social media, more people are spending time online reading reviews, blogs, participating in conversations about topics and brands. This has required a totally different approach to online marketing – the fractured website.
Imagine taking a hammer to a mirror and smashing it, the analogy being that you take your website and break it down into smaller pieces and position these pieces of content where your audience are online.
It’s then being strategic about what content you put where on the web, to drive interest and engagement with the brand.
Examples of Fractured Websites
There are other examples of fractured websites that I could include, but some of the top ones would be:
Tate Galleries collaborated with Google Street Maps earlier this year, so if there’s a painting in the Tate galleries of something on Google Maps, information is shown. With the aim of increasing the reach of art and culture to the online audience.
Dell produced Small Business Guides to Social Media Facebook page which had over 34,000 fans at the last check. Their aim was to associate the brand with providing an online resource for one of their target audiences.
Neither of these highly successful collaborations would have worked if they had placed the content on their websites. They have only worked as they have understood how to embrace the change, and take the content to the audience.
Moving to a Fractured Website Model
With the growth and adoption of social media, this trend is here to stay, so businesses need to react, evolve and adopt new strategies to maximise this opportunity.
Companies need to realise that driving traffic into your website, is an old school way of using the new technologies.
So to embrace the new marketing model of fractured websites, you need to start thinking in a different way:
- Understanding where your target audiences are residing on the web and which social media sites
- What technologies / software /resource – do you need – a blog, twitter account, Facebook business page, forums, reviews etc?
- What fragments of content do you need to place where
- How should you link up all the fragmented pieces
- How should you start thinking about engaging with customers?
Let me know if you have started thinking about how you could embrace this change in marketing or if you have already taken the plunge!
Look forward to hearing from you