From the desk of content management guru, Gerry McGovern:
Don't publish for the sake of publishing. You may have one key message that you leave on your homepage for years. It's not a matter of having content that is new or old; it is a matter of having content that is relevant and useful.
Some organizations hardly ever bother to update their websites. There are stories on the homepage that can be months—if not years—out of date. These
organizations simply don't understand that leaving this content on the website is damaging to the professional reputation of the organization.
However, some organizations publish new content even when they shouldn’t. They fall into the trap of thinking that publishing is about news. Yes, an element of publishing can be about news, but that is not what the core purpose of publishing is. At a basic level, publishing is about getting the right content to the right person at the right time at the right cost....
If you are not an organization that creates news, then don't have a prominent news section on your website. If you have one major message, then it is perfectly okay to promote that message in the center of your homepage every day of every year....
It's not about being new. It is about being useful. Your job as a website editor is to make the difficult decisions in relation to what really matters to your key readers. How does news help them complete the task that they came to your website to do.
I couldn't agree more.
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