Nonprofit Spark – Non-profit website content governance and user testing – 12/05/11

Summary: It's easy to get into legal hot water as inexperienced and overburdened staff people add copyrighted text, images and graphics from other sources to your organization's website. The people who created that content in the first place call it theft. On this show, I speak with Clinton Forry (http://www.content-ment.com), a nationally-recognized content strategist in the financial services industry, about how important it is to govern your website's content, much like your board governs your organization. We talk about ways we get into trouble, and a method for staying out of it. We don't describe the specifics of copyright law, licensing and the like. Rather, we offer a way of thinking about your website so it's a manageable, useful communications tool that makes potential donors, volunteers and advocates feel good about connecting with you. I also speak with Darrell Benatar of UserTesting.com (http://www.usertesting.com)which is a very affordable, quick and helpful useability testing service that has ordinary people visit your site and offer honest, recorded feedback about it. It can be quite a shock to learn that your site isn't as easy or useful as you think! Also, user tests can be a great way to make your case that less is more when it comes to content!