Creating a hub for your city – Where are people going to find your information

Cities often face difficulties when determining which outlets they will utilize to broadcast information. Ideally, a city’s information would be broadcast directly from one spot – or “hub” to the source. In most cases, however, cities maintain several entities on the Web such as social networking sites and blogs. Cities must execute a successful strategy to encourage visitors to their social networks to visit their website through calls-to-action.

Think of a “hub” as the trunk of a tree, the backbone of online strategy. The social networking sites and blogs are the braches, but branches cannot survive without the trunk; the trunk provides stability.

The benefit of a hub allows for a coordinated use of social networking tools such as Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, Flicker accounts, etc. to lead visitors to your website where you control the outgoing message. In order to control the outgoing message, it is imperative that companies have the ability to update their website with new content without the help of an entire development team.

The simplest way to manage all of your online content is to implement a content management system (CMS) to organize and control the flow of information.

Content management systems allow website administrators to add and edit content on their own; some enterprise content management systems allow users to login from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection. One of the major advantages of using a content management system is that eliminating the need to contact a city’s development team will ultimately result in decreased costs. In addition, cities are given the freedom to update their content at their leisure.

Once a city has developed a strategy to drive visitors to their website from social media sites, they can begin to focus on developing compelling and relevant content that will encourage visitors to come back multiple times. Ensuring people are visiting a controlled information source, whether it is directly though the website or through social media sites, is vital when delivering important information.

Building a city website in a content management system allows companies to deliver relevant content to current clients and their target market as often as they please making it an ideal hub for all marketing communications. Learn more about implementing a content management system.