The best case scenario for keeping your website current and accurate is to have one person responsible for its upkeep. However, if your organization relies on volunteers, finding someone with the time and technical skills required to effectively maintain the site may be difficult.
Why is designating one person to maintain the site beneficial?
Entrusting this responsibility to one person will allow them to develop a deep familiarity with all the content on the site, as well as its structure and functionality. This will allow them to place new content where it fits best. This consistency and continuity will make it easy for users to find the information they need quickly.
Also, when there is just one person responsible for adding new content, that person is more likely to maintain a consistent look. This gives the site as a whole a more professional appearance.
Keeping content current is also easier when one person is responsible because they can track when specific content is no longer relevant, such as an event has that passed and should be removed. This makes the site less likely to become out of date.
Finally, it is not uncommon that changing content in one place will be a different process from changing similar content somewhere else. For example, in WordPress, changing a featured image is different from changing an image in a gallery. When the person updating the site hasn’t made a change in a while, they may forget exactly what they need to do in a specific instance. That’s another reason why having one person make all the changes can be better, simpler and faster than having multiple people responsible at different times.
What skills are required to maintain a website?
A strong candidate has good communication and time-management skills, foresight and persistence. In addition, they should have the following technical skills:
- Familiarity with basic marketing principles, including knowing how to format text in a compelling way
- Acquaintance with web standards
- Knowledgable of basic search engine optimization practices
- Ability to follow a defined design
For organizations that rely on volunteers, it can be a challenge to find someone for even the simplest task. Finding one person who can take on full responsibility for site maintenance can be even more difficult.
What if it isn’t possible to have just one person responsible for this task?
One alternative we often recommend to finding a single individual to handle the entire project is to split the job between up to three volunteers, each with a distinct role: Editor, Poster and Technical Advisor.
The Editor
- Collect content, including the date it needs to be removed
- Write copy exactly as it is to be posted
Necessary qualifications:
- Good written communication
- Comfortable and familiar with email and attachments
The Poster
- Responsible for posting information to the website
- Confirm when information has been received
- Provide estimated date/time when the changes will be completed
- Keep track of what information is on the site and when it needs to be removed
- Contact the Editor with questions about new content
Necessary qualifications
- Ideally, the candidate for this position will have experience working with your specific content management system (CMS). This will make the transition as smooth as possible.
- If this is not possible, the minimum skill set required is a solid understanding of Microsoft Word or a similar word processing program. This person will need one-on-one training to understand the CMS.
Technical Advisor
- Manage software updates
- Answer big questions
- Make more complicated changes to the website such as adding or removing pages, changing navigation or adding plugins
Necessary qualifications
- Website development experierience
- Good communication skills
Additional recommendations
- Arrange to meet with the Editor and the Poster regularly to review upcoming and past events and to discuss the current state of the website.
- At the end of each meeting ask, “Is there anything we discussed here today that should be posted on the website? Who will be responsible to passing along this information to the Editor?”
- Leading up to and following every event, assign one person to be responsible for sending information about that event to the Editor.
Your website is your public face. It is often the first contact someone will have with your organization and it is where they will expect to find the most up-to-date information. A team of smart, driven, committed individuals whose skills are suited to the task will do the best job of maintaining a website.
Do you prefer to hire someone for the task rather than rely on volunteers?
Keeping a website up-to-date using only volunteers can be a challenge. Maybe it’s time to consider hiring out for this work. When you hire us to maintain the content of your website, you are ensuring that your website remains secure and up-to-date. Also, you can be confident that it will function smoothly and this upkeep will reflect well on your organization. Learn more about our Content Management Service. Alternatively, give us a call at (518) 392-0846 or email [email protected].