How many spheres are there for the Web Strategist?

Jeremiah

Actually, I wrote it. My name is Jonathan. Also a biblical name come to think of it. The name of the firm is Abraham Harrison.

Chris Abraham...Mark Harrison.

I've corrected it thanks!

Jeremiah,

It seems like both "User Needs" and "Markets and Audiences" would be covered under a different title such as "Constituent Needs."

User needs, audience needs and the needs of the market should have equal weighting in that sphere as product market fit has a direct effect on the user, the audience(in some instance's the user) and the user's needs directly affect the market needs.

Thus given the audience, user and market at times having a distinct group of people the term "Constituent Needs" might be a better fit.

-Joe

Joe

Interesting, I've not heard that term used in such a way before.

Web strategy can be about 'reading' markets, because free markets ultimately reflect end-user needs...those services/sites/goods that users don't need will eventually fall out of the market, but those that users want will flourish until someone else can provide the same service either more effectively or to a higher level.

So I think that the market can be rolled into Users because ultimately the Users are the market. Jonathan's explains part of the market/audience as:

"web strategists need to know how their organizations and their products and /or service offerings are coming off via blogs, microblogs, online communities, forums, etc"

This seems to me to be an issue of perception by the user, which rolls it back into the first element. It certainly is a fine line dividing shades of gray, because in reality, none of these elements is completely separate from any of the others.

Certainly a thought provoking article! Thanks, Jonathan!

When I read Jeremiah's original post, he states "Web Strategy is the long-term iterative process of defining the direction of a Web Site or Web Product. The Strategy must meet three goals: 1)Users, Business, and Technology to be succesful...Every website has a strategy..."

To me that means primarily web sites and the users (or visitiors) to those websites. People who have chosen to come to a certain site. The site had to be created with them in mind.

I see the larger overall market, especially with much of the Web 2.0 technology that is discussed as a different animal. Blogs, forums, social networking communities. Conversations going on. Maybe not about the product itself but the marketplace (what type of car should I buy?).

Maybe it's my background in PR that has me saying that a Web Strategist needs to know how all of these platforms - platfroms that decentralize the strategy - affect brands. What we have now is much more dyanamic and conversational. To me that goes beyond a user on a web site. Thoughts?

I guess it depends on how you define "Users." If you consider "users" as the macro group of all people on the web (or frankly, all people period) than I think technically all groups would fall out of this term. But to Jonathan's point, you can't lump users of a specific site into the same group as those affected by the brand via other online contexts. I think the "Market" would consist of all entities that need to be addressed with your strategy, a subset of which would be your site users. The term "market" could even include "non-human" entities as well. My vote would be to keep the 3 spheres, rename "User Needs" to "Market Needs" and you are good to go.