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Fresh off the Wordpress: Kate Clinton

By Ari | Mar 21, 10 08:37 AM

I was delighted recently to be able to work again with Kate Clinton. Some years ago I met her and her publicist in New York; Kate's site was a few pages of static text. They wanted interaction with fans, and something they could update themselves. I built them a Movable Type website that hosted all of her material (articles, blog posts, videos, audio, photo albums) and made it easy for them to maintain - and the collection of material grew. So did the visibility of Kate's fan base! With blog comments to make and social networking profiles to interact with, her adoring public had an outlet and boy did they use it. I also helped Kate and her team build a monthly newsletter that's become a major part of Kate's outreach, and a source of intense fan interaction.

Then, a few months ago, I got an email. The site had become too hard and time-consuming to maintain! I talked with Kate's publicist and webmaster and learned about the challenges they were facing - basically, too much of a good thing. They'd joined more social networks. Kate's vlog and blog had risen in popularity and were being reposted to many other websites. And every time Kate made a new video or article it had to be posted manually to a half-dozen different profiles and pages of her own. Her Facebook fan page and profile had maxed out their number of friends and fans and a second fan page had been set up, making Facebook updates cumbersome. The newsletter had swelled to an unwieldy length and complexity. Some auto-updating had been set up, but for the most part, updating Kate's web presence had become a lot of work. They were ready for some serious streamlining. They also wanted a fresher look that would show off Kate's new logo, emphasize interaction and put Kate's newest material front and center as quickly and easily as possible. And of course it should be even easier to use.

How times and technology and communication have changed! The new website is built on Wordpress, and every part of it either updates automatically or can be updated by Kate's publicist. I reorganized it and redesigned it while retaining enough of the original language and look to keep Kate's current fans happy.

Along with numerous other improvements, I made Kate's RSS feed, newsletter signup, Twitter, Facebook, and latest vlog easier to access, and installed AddThis so Kate's fans can easily share pages on their favorite social bookmarking sites. I set up an easy-to-update sticky post for Kate's tour to highlight upcoming show dates and special events. I also made a new look for Kate's newsletter that uses a custom Constant Contact template Kate's publicist can update herself, quickly and easily.

Finally, to make social network updating less daunting, I helped Kate and her team streamline the way they were making video posts, and set YouTube to autopost to Wordpress. I set Wordpress to autopost to all of Kate's Facebook pages as well as her Twitter. And I set up an account for her at ping.fm so she can make microposts there that automatically appear on Twitter, MySpace, and all of her Facebook pages. As a result of all of this fine-tuning, Kate and her team can now keep her media empire up-to-date with just a few clicks.

It's great to work with clients for so many years that I can help them through these transitions not just once but twice. For me, this job has been a powerful reminder of the importance of crafting solutions that can adapt and evolve along with technologies and communications practices - and, it's clearly shown me that no matter how hard you try to create a sustainable design, another even better tech solution is just a few years away. Though at the moment, I can't imagine loving any CMS more than Wordpress...

See the site: kateclinton.com

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