Maintaining the website

It is an undeniable truth that the content on your website is never up to date enough. It is a constant battle to keep it relevant and on message. No matter how long you pour over the detail and how good it looks at the launch, when you go back you can always find something that needs to be tweaked, rewritten, or indeed scrapped.

So it is with the North East Initiative on Business Ethics. I’m not sure how I came to be looking after the website, perhaps because I had some sort of IT background and volunteered in my enthusiasm to help, but I am no marketing expert. A year ago we rewrote the website and it looked clean, fresh and to the point. Now I am having second thoughts and have persuaded my fellow directors to have another look.

It is clear then that maintaining a website is like how the Forth Bridge used to be. You need to start at one end and review every piece of content and when you get to the end you need to start again. Just as yesterday’s newspapers are today’s chip wrappers then yesterday’s content is a constant reminder that you have’;t moved on and nothing is happening in your world.

This time thankfully I have an expert to help me in Rachel, the Culture Vulture and one of our recently appointed directors. I can see the things she sees yet she is able to sort the wheat from the chaff and transform a dull and insipid paragraph into a pithy and eye-catching phrase or two. 

Together we are working to try and refresh each part of the website. It is going to take some time to get through it between all of the other things that occupy or time, like earning a living, so please bear with us as our beautiful butterfly emerges from its chrysalis. 

We’ll make the changes and be happy with what we have done yet in a few months we will look back and think… ‘Why did we write that?’You can see the fruits of our labour here.