"You're good with computers, right?" For twenty years I have watched that sentence hand the website to office managers, marketing coordinators, executive assistants, and owners. Nobody trains them for it, and most of them spend the first year believing they are unqualified for a job they are already doing. Strategic Web Management: First Steps for the Accidental Web Manager is the book I wrote for that person. This post explains who it is for, how it is organized, and how the podcast and the free worksheets fit around it.
Who it's for
The book is written for four readers. The Inheritor is the office manager, marketer, or administrator who got the website when someone left. The Founder is the small business owner doing all of it personally. The Career-Changer is moving into web work and wants the operational context that tutorials skip. The Nonprofit Volunteer is holding an organization's web presence together with no budget and no training.
Their paths differ; their needs arrive in the same order. First, find out what the organization actually owns online. Next, get it under the organization's control. Then improve it, one deliberate project at a time. The book follows that order.
What it covers
Most guides stop at the website. This one covers the whole web stack: the domain, the hosting, the platform, the business email, the marketing tools, the social accounts, and the subscriptions wired into all of it. Eighteen chapters move from getting your bearings, through the website itself, to email, marketing, and the long-term plan. None of it requires writing code. What it requires is organization and follow-through, and the role found you because you have both.
Every chapter ends with something to do. There is a worksheet, checklist, or template for each one, from the Self-Assessment Scorecard in Chapter 1 to the First 90 Days plan at the end.
How the podcast fits
The Web Managers Podcast walks through the book one chapter per episode, in about twenty minutes, with a myth busted and a quick win at the end of each. Six episodes are live now:
Episode | Book chapter |
|---|---|
Introduction | |
Chapter 1 | |
Chapter 2 | |
Chapter 3 | |
Chapter 4 | |
Chapter 5 |
The episodes and the chapters are built to work together. Listen on the commute, read the chapter when you have an hour, and do the worksheet while it is fresh. Each one reinforces the others, and the worksheet is where the work actually gets done.
Where to start
If you have just been handed the website, I recommend two steps this week. First, listen to Episode 1 and complete the Self-Assessment Scorecard; it turns your honest gaps into a reading and listening order. Second, before you improve anything visible, read Chapter 2 and start the web account inventory. Every risk in this job lives in an account you have not found yet.
The role may have arrived by accident. Holding it well is a decision, and the book is there to help you make it on purpose.
Get the book: Strategic Web Management: First Steps for the Accidental Web Manager.
Get the worksheets free: every worksheet from the book and the podcast is in the Web Managers Portal. Create your free account.