Photo by Laenulfean
About a week ago I read a ProBlogger post called, "Have Blogs Killed Conventional Websites?". It was a Guest Post by Suzanne Falter-Barns. In this post Suzanne compares conventional websites to blogs as she tries to determine whether conventional websites are a dying breed.
The post brought up a lot of recent anxiety for me. I remember battling with these same thoughts about 18 months ago when I started my first blog. Up until that point all I had were static websites. It didn’t take me long after I started to blog and add in other Social Media activities to realize that I had nothing to fear from Blogs.
My answer to Suzanne’s question about whether Blogs have killed the conventional website is an emphatic, "No." Rather, due to Social Media & blogging, the standard static websites are evolving…. not dying.
I don’t think that Social Media is killing the static Websites at all. In fact, Social Media is giving static Website’s new life.
6 Basic Social Media Activities that can Give a Static Website New Life
- Opens up the Lines of Communication between Customer/Clients & Website Owner. You can do this in many ways. Such as Forums or adding a Blog to your Static Website.
- Let your Customer/Clients know via a Blog about Sales, Promotions, New items, Recalls, etc. Adding a Blog with a RSS feed to your website is a great way to let your customers and readers know about important updates.
- Adding a Blog to your Website can add new content / web pages to your site. This causes more entrances to your Website for Serps and for Viewers.
- Add Social Bookmarking buttons to your static pages and let viewers bookmark them. This can add extra traffic to your website when their social bookmarks are shared with others.
- Using Social Media can let your website compete with other websites/blogs that have larger marketing bank accounts.
- Using Photo sharing for your Product Images can bring traffic in to your website.
The list can keep on going, but my point is still the same. The Static Website is not going anywhere, but the successful ones will add Social Media.
I designed my first static website in 2001 and many, many more followed. It was in 2006 that my anxiety began to get really intense about blogging and other social media. I love security and stability and whatever was happening to the Web at that moment was freaking me out. What is a Blog? What is Social Networking? Why must I change?! But, after that initial temper tantrum I became very determined to not let my Static Websites fall to the waste side. I started researching Blogging & Social Media to see what I could do to adapt my static websites to what the web world was becoming. I wanted to learn what made a blog special compared to a static website…. what made a blog different than what I had already. Why should I feel so threatened by "The Blog".
Through that research and the year or so that followed I realized that the Blog is NOT killing the Conventional Website!! In fact, I feel that
Social Media is causing websites to evolve into so much more. So much more is being offered to the small business website. Blogging keeps the communication open with your customers and potential customers. Other Social Media activities helps get you seen and noticed. Social Media Marketing lets you market your products and services without the extreme cost of other marketing. Also, social media can make sure that your good name isn’t being tarnished. And, if it has been it can be fixed.
Plus, many Static Websites have been around for a very long time. Some search engines consider the website’s age when ranking it in its Search Engine. So, having one of these so called, dying breeds can be a very, very good thing. So, instead of morning its loss celebrate it with adding Social Media to it…. Add a Blog.
Old School Webmasters don’t you dare believe that Blogging & other Social Media is killing the Static Website. Social Media is going to take your Static Website to bigger places… that is if you will let it.
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Jason Rakowski
One of the things that really improved some static sites I worked on was the integration of two technologies: Yahoo! Pipes and Grouper/Carp. These allow a live, social media connection real-time in a static site. When people make good decisions about the injection of that content into the correct context, it can really help brush away the cobwebs.
Shana, excellent points you have made. I, too, have static pages on my flagship site as well as two blogs. Both arrangements help bring in traffic, in different ways at that.
Google seems to love some of my static pages as they’ve been around for several years, have achieved PageRank, and are doing well in the SERPs.
Excellent theory, I too have suggested that irrelevant corporate websites need to evolve.
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/05/29/web-strategy-how-to-evolve-your-irrelevant-corporate-website/
Whats funny is that I just installed WordPress to run a ‘website’ (not a blog) recently. It’s actually quite easy if you get a minimalist theme to start a little bit above “from the ground up”.
Hi Shana,
I definitely agree. Social Media has been great for static websites. However, “old school” webmasters that do not embrace social media will hurt their sites. An older site has advantages but by ignoring social media the relevancy of those advantages will decline. Anyway, nice points.
Beau hooks
@Scott Clark – Excellent points. Those are two I have actually never tried. Thank you so much for the Sphinn, Scott. 🙂
@Matt Keegan – That is exactly the point I’m trying to make, Matt. I have no reason to believe that static websites are going anywhere anytime soon. Thanks for the comment, Matt.
@Jeremiah Owyang – I am thrilled you enjoyed the post. It’s all about evolving. Websites aren’t going anywhere…. they are just changing. The success of business has always been to change with the times. I believe the rule still applies. Thanks for leaving a comment and the link to your post.
@MikeonTV – There you go. Thanks for stopping by.
@TzuVelli – Indeed. Thank you so much for the comment. 🙂
I think the biggest thing with static websites was that going “dynamic” meant lots of code and some sort of application. Simple blog platforms like WordPress and the integration of social media, let static sites become more dynamic without a lot of the development headaches. WordPress (and others) are now bigger than the original blogs as well. They are getting to be full content management systems, so that you can start a website using them, just like MikeonTV said.
@Rob D – Absolutely, I totally agree. WordPress and the other blogging platforms have made creating websites a ton easier. Thank you so much for the excellent comment.
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I waited a few days to comment on this because I have mixed feelings and wanted to give myself time to cook.
One down side I see is that, unlike in a well-run forum, there are no equals in blog comment conversations. We are guests in the author’s house. Do you have any thoughts on if or how forum-style think-tank conversations can thrive along side an increasingly active blogging movement?
Excellent article.
@Elizabeth Able – Thank you so much for stopping by Elizabeth.
Forums are one of the first Social Media activities that arrived on the Web years ago. This post is talking about adding Social Media activities to give static websites new life…. Forums included.
But, to answer your question I think a lot of how conversations via blog comments will play out will be determined by how involved the Blogger is with his comments.
I run my blogs in a similar way that I run my household. When I have guests in my house I do not make them feel that they are not my equals. I treat my guests with the utmost respect as I do my blog visitors. They can ask me anything or state anything they like as long as they do this respectfully and I will treat them the same. That’s how I run my blogs and my blog’s comments.
I understand that all Blogs are run differently, but this is the way that I hope the majority of Blog Owner run their blogs. I just can’t see Blog comments being run proactively without running them in this fashion.
Thank you so much for the comment, Elizabeth
Good paper for a today’s stuff. If I had kind of remarks about this topic, I would separate the two things : website on one hand, and Blogs on the other hand. Why ?
Websites traditionnaly talked about business (.com) and information (.org) for example. And Blogs were no longer out of some people who at start, loved writing, considering the fact that they needed write, but no succeed to be published (or wanted to). Goals were totally differents. Even in nowadays, frontier is no longer huge, I guess there’s a major use in these two kinds of sites. And as a revenge, Blogs brought lots of evolutions to the classical web ; see for example, lots of API, only developped for social networking…and become what FB’s done with Beacon…
Yes, Blogs woke up old sites. But yes, I think there’s still a place for two shapes of online communication…
Best wishes.
L.