Determining the Purpose of Your Site

You have created a site or a group. You may have done so, based on any number of factors and yet you may not have a clear vision of its purpose. You need to determine the purpose of the site in order for it to be effective and in order for you to look forward to working on the site or sharing the site with others.

If you have developed or created a site which is intentionally without a clear purpose or vision, then that free and eclectic lack of purpose or vision is the vision of the site.  Even with that open vision, you will need to establish some constraints and guidelines, e.g., posting of inappropriate or unlawful material.

When you determine a clear vision for the site it will drive the nature of the content which you choose to post. However, a vision should be re-visited over the course of time to ensure that it is still relevant, and that you remain convicted that the vision is what you want.

Adding External Content

Many RSS feeds provide interesting and valuable content which you might wish to share with visitors of yours site.  When you review other links you may also determine that you would like to share that information as well.  You need to ensure that you are authorized to post any information or links before doing so. You must determine that the proposed content is not subject to copyright or other legal constraints and ensure you comply with any requirements before taking action. You may assume that others will also consider posting content from your site and you should take requisite precautions to ensure that your readers also understand any legal constraints which govern its content.

Using Consultants to Post

You need to determine if you want to permit others to post content on the site or if you wish to delegate posting entirely to a third party.  “Experts” may advise that selecting and posting external content to groups, timelines, or other social media sites should be delegated to them. Using experts to relieve your burden of maintaining a site should not be treated in a cavalier manner. Your sites are a reflection of you or your business or cause. It is important that they reflect your priorities, your interests, and your information or opinions.

However, you should maintain oversight of the content and never hesitate to remove, modify, replace, or add to the content.  Your reputation is dependent upon the content posted regardless of the source.

Responsibility to Maintain or Shut Down

You need to be prepared to add content whether continually or sporadically. Regardless of the nature of your site, you need to be prepared to maintain it or shut down the site.

What is your buzz about?