Imagination Publishing’s Online Community Process Revealed

July 19, 2007

Bud Caddell, Online Managing Editor at Imagination Publishing, today boldly published the company’s online community development process at his blog, Passion2Publish.

The process is very thorough, as it should be since it’s in a document shared by so many people. This is inspiring me to get our process into a shared document. Granted, it’s only my first week, so I’m still learning. But a rough cut of our process goes something like this.

Market research
Competitive Analysis (Adam likes to do this after Site Architecture, but I’m still undecided)
Site Planning
Site Architecture
Wireframing
Site Design and Launch
Content Development
Content Distribution and Marketing

There are many subcategories that fall under each step in the process. But you get the idea.

Why am I not afraid to share the process online? Because a process is nothing without talent to implement it. You can look at the list and say, “Hmm, I think I’ll wireframe my new site today.” But it won’t do you a lick of good if you don’t know anything about usability.

The great thing about examining these processes is how evident it is that online custom publishing firms must look at the whole picture. It’s not only about seo or only about social media. The end goal is always the user, which is a person. It’s not a search engine and it’s not a bookmarking site. People are the goal and conversation is the medium. It just so happens that we can make those conversations happen online. And that’s what Bold Interactive is all about.

Technorati Tags: online custom publishing, conversation marketing