RESOURCES and ADVICE

A Website Mission Statement in Action

Based on a presentation to the Community Media Workshop, March 18, 2003

By Jonathan Lehrer

Call it a Mission Statement, or call it a Statement of Purpose. Either way, it should be a clear list of a few bullet points about your website, designed to focus your organizational resources on the purpose of the site.

A Mission Statement can help you plan future enhancements to your site. Without a Mission Statement, you have no way to prioritize internal requests to add content or functionality to the site.

A Mission Statement for your website is especially helpful if you have just been given responsibility for maintaining the website and you need to ensure that you're on the right track. (Learn more about how and why to create a Mission Statement: http://www.webauditgroup.com/advice/mission.shtml.)

It can be useful to review the Mission Statement for a real, live website. Prior to creating the current website for the Publicity Club of Chicago (www.publicity.org), I drafted a such a statement. After input from the PCC Board of Directors, the Mission Statement took the following form:

Mission Statement Example

The Mission of the Website of the Publicity Club of Chicago (www.publicity.org) is to:

Use the Internet to serve PCC’s existing goals and objectives;
Foster a sense of community among PCC members;
Promote PCC membership by serving as both as a promotional and public relations vehicle;
Promote PCC events and programs;
Facilitate communication among PCC members, for the purpose of social interaction and/or professional development;
Publish news and information relating to PCC, augmenting the monthly Dateline newsletter;
Allow online event and membership registration and payment;
Provide revenue to PCC through advertisements or sponsorships; and
Offer online job posting and career development assistance.

Proposed Features of the PCC Website:

Upcoming programs and events
Listserve
Request for assistance
Member firm listings
Member news
Golden Trumpet
Sharing ideas and resources

Design Principles of the PCC Website:

Graphics should be used only when necessary to convey a message.
Navigation should be clear.
Links to other sites should be included only when truly relevant to the public relations profession.
There should be a place for member-contributed material.
The privacy of members’ personal information should be guarded.
Where resources are limited, they should be devoting to keeping the site’s basic information fresh and up-to-date, as opposed to developing new features.

If you visit the site (www.publicity.org), you'll see that we have accomplished many of these bullet points. A few more still remain to be realized.

To comment on this article, send an e-mail to Jonathan Lehrer (j@jlehrer.com).

Updated 3/18/03