We shall continue today with our discussion on corporate web strategy, we discussed last about setting up the implementation team.

Like I pointed out on the team members why the CEO or COO should be on the team, the purpose is to make sure that the web strategies derive its strength from the corporate strategies, making sure that it not a journey on its own without a correlation with the business.

Understand corporate strategies clearly

As businesses have niche they serve, which they ultimately link their strategies with. To my little understanding, the customer plays a centre role in this process. I want to also believe that your business have its core competence, which is what people think of immediately they hear or think about your brand. Think Google, think Search! Think Microsoft, think windows! Think Disney, think entertainment! Think GTB, think banking with easy backed with technology! Think Punch, and you think of authoritative news reporting! And the list goes on. Your core competence is what brings your customers towards you even as customer service influence continued business relationship, any company that overlooks its core competence, will get lost in the buzz.

I made a comment about punchng.com the last time and someone mentioned that, they’ve got blog which you can interact with! Fine they’ve got that but when you think about punch, what comes to mind?  That has affected punch ranking for the last 3 months, it sure shows that the rule online is different from that of offline. It’s not really about what you put on your web both the business impact and relationship to what you do.

The CEO or COO (or any top management person) knows about the business direction, influence (to some extent) and strategies. This people help table what they are looking at achieving with their web campaign keeping it in tandem with the corporate strategies.

Understand web as a tool to be used for your business

Unless you are a full internet company, the web remains a tool to use for your business and not your business. There are advice here and there about bring your business online, about the possibilities and advantages of web 2.0 and social media. All this are nothing but evolution of what the web comes to serve. The web gives you opportunity to expose your products and services to your customers, reach out beyond your border, help you better serve your customers and reduce your expenses on all these.

Like every other IT campaign, web makes up about 20% about you and your companies. So, you don’t concentrate on the technology while overlooking your business aim. The web only helps you to achieve them faster and cheaper.

Knotting it together

Corporate strategies are not generic but specific to your business needs and vision for your company. So naming one here will be like giving someone direction of what one doesn’t know about.

You need to iron out what your corporate strategies are, and see how the web can help you solve it. You may need to ask some tough questions like these;

• What do we do, and how can web help us do it better?
• What are our competitors using the web for, and how?
• Are our customers or target customers’ web savvy?
• How do they use the web?
• How can we serve them with the web?
• How much do we need to spend on our web effort before thinking of return (monetary, time and the likes)?
• Where do we see ourselves in the next couple of years and how can we accelerate this with the web?

These and many more questions you should answer before plunging into web effort. Now link them to the technologies made available by the web to achieve all these.

Have you implemented a web strategy lately? What are the tough questions you answered? Have you benefited from your web effort? Share your experience…