Which web age do you live in?

Gavin Heaton has posted an excellent piece about the Three Ages of Content Management Systems which goes a long way to explaining how the web has evolved and how organisations and the systems they use may or may not have progressed. Its a great read and I urge you to take 5 minutes to see what Gavin has to say.

We now live in the sharing web age

The 3 ages Gavin talks about are:

• The Age of Waving

• The Age of Shouting

• The Age of Sharing

Clearly, given the ubiquity of social media now, we are in The Age of Sharing. Organisations who realise this and have moved to ensure their web presence reflects it are the ones who are benefiting. The content on their websites is being passed around, searched and now generates considerably more traffic than many of their contemporaries who still live in The Age of Shouting.

Unfortunately many people treat the web the same way as they treat their traditional advertising. They see it purely as a broadcasting media. They haven’t heard of the Age of Conversation and they haven’t heard of the 1000 True Fans theory. They are still yelling at an audience that isn’t necessarily listening.

At a more technical level, as Gavin points out, this is reflected in their Content Management Systems. The odds are that if a company has on old-fashioned, hard to use CMS then they are probably Shouting from their website. Its simply too hard to update information so they publish their content once and leave it. Or perhaps they spend a small fortune on Banner ads and Adwords to drive traffic to their static sites.

We constantly advise clients to take the Sharing route. Create innovative websites on easy-to-use CMS systems that are SEO and social media-friendly. It encourages a solid, long-term approach to marketing than generates much greater loyalty than shouting ever will. It results in increased traffic from multiple sources, like social networks and organic search, that is substantially more cost-effective than broadcast style advertising.

The question is, which web age do you live in?