Corporate communications websites cost money; they don’t (often) generate revenue (not directly anyway).
That makes them low priority for the marketing people who would ditch all that blather about missions and community commitments if only they could. It also makes it really difficult to justify spending any money on them, which is why some are so poor.
So what do you do if you’re an online communications monkey/web editor/manager and your sites are second, third or fourth tier to the national media coverage that the PR bunnies are all chasing? After all, PR bunnies are cheap compared to a CMS, server space, IT support, content contributors, translations, skilled editors, redesigns, etc.
You could say to your director that you need investment for your corporate sites because they’re really frayed around the edges; they make the company look bad; they don’t reflect the mission statement and commitment to quality every company says it’s got (leaving out that the sites reflect poorly on the staff that run them).
That won’t convince him or her.
What might is turning your corporate site into a revenue stream (ha! fat chance), or its only equivalent for cost centres: saving money.
But that might mean proving some of your PR bunnies are better allocated to other tasks as the websites will be doing part of their jobs for them. Hmmm. That might be good for the ones who are also under-funded and doing two-people’s jobs. But for the others? Well, take that colleague off your Facebook friend list.
