We talk a lot about discovering who your audience is and talking directly to them through your website. If you’ve been a faithful reader, you know by now that it’s an exercise in self-aggrandizing to focus the website on the big wigs at your organization. However, you should also be looking at less visible audiences.
Let’s say you’re a social services agency, and you say, “Our audience members are the people who come in for treatment or services.” Good start, and your website should make it clear to those people how to do things like book appointments and give feedback on services they’ve received. But you have more work to do.
If you’re that social services agency, think about what you can add to your website to address these additional audiences:
Local and regional governments.
You’ll want to swap information with them and also receive client referrals. Make it easy by providing clear channels and maybe even building networks on the website to facilitate the flow of data.
The locals.
Social care businesses occupy an important segment of the community, so remember to engage the people around you who may one day depend upon you. They are one of your strongest sources of new clients, so think about how you can make it easy to include them.
Partner organizations.
The other social care, transport, hospitals, education, law enforcement, housing services, leisure services and benefit entitlement services all depend on you for information and vice versa. Create a strong connection to them through technology, and you’ll serve yourself better, as well as your clients.
Your staff.
I’m not talking about putting biographical information on the staff pages. I’m talking about how your website should support your field staff in their daily activities.
The key is to think about your website not as just a way to push information to your primary audience, but to also think about it as a connecter throughout your community. This is the kind of thinking that will help you and your website reach out to new people and make them better cared for while making your website a worthwhile investment.