HomePostsMar 15, 2011

Web Literacy for Business Owners

I have been thinking on this concept for many months but have not had made the time to pull it all together. This is, however, the underlying concept behind my blog and my business so it’s about time I put it down on “paper.” This is where my mind went and what I think about the topic but I need your help as well. This is a limited (though large) pool of topics that I consider essential for business owners to understand, the collection of which define basic web literacy for business owners.

web_literacy

I’d love to hear feedback from everyone, but specifically from two groups of people:

  1. People who work on the web: Developers, designers, consultants, bloggers, SEOs, etc… What’s missing here? Is the concept generally sound? Am I going overboard? Let me learn from your experience!
  2. People who own or operate a website: Business owners, CEOs, marketers, novices, professionals… what confuses you the most on the web? What do you hear about but don’t understand? Where are your weaknesses? Is this list scary? Let me help you alleviate the pain!

I should say, before I drop this massive list on you, that this is not a list of skills you need to have, more like a list of things you need to consider and be able to speak to. If someone asks you “where does most of your traffic come from,” the answer should be “well, our Twitter account brings in about 100 visitors per month but the conversion rate is low. Search, however, has been increasing and that brings us leads” rather than “I haven’t the foggiest.” Understanding your site is not the same as taking over all the functions of a good webmaster; you don’t have the time for that and, if you’re doing your job as CEO/Principal/whatever well, you shouldn’t. But, you need to know the questions to ask, where your money is best spent, and when you’re being hoodwinked by a vendor. It’s my job to troubleshoot your RSS feed or build out a new piece of your site or qualify your crazy ideas (you do have a few crazy ideas, right) but it’s yours to have a vague idea of when that needs to happen.

So, without further ado, my definition of complete web literacy for business owners:

Web Literacy


Assumptions


Incoming

Social

Search

Subscription

Referrals

Advertising


On-Site

Conversions

Subscriptions

Creation

Consumption


Outgoing

Social Outposts

Outgoing referrals

Data sources


Tools/Tactics

HTML

Analytics

Design

SEO

For the visual types: the mind map

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Marketing Site Optimization SEO Design Web Strategy
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