In reponse to an RfP, I found this the request to be an interesting one as it encompassed everything digital: website, social media and custom apps. More excitingly it required a huge attention to detail to the marketing side of things.
The project spans across multiple countries in Africa, which means different languages and cultures. Why this is an important factor to consider is because people are different and culture tends to determine how we search. Breaking down the users and tackling the largest group is the best approach here, but because I haven't interacted with the great people of Mozambique, I focus mostly on the Kenyan users.
Using S.E.O as the starting point of this strategy is unorthodox however this is a product specific approach I am taking, and in todays world most products start off in the digital world before moving into something tangible (e.g. virtual trainings on how to farm fish that leads to a higher yield for the farmer). I focus more on the common digital platforms the TA would use and the adapt from there.
When working with both print and digital you need to be able to set some guidelines, in the case the digital world governs how the print looks because that is where the key engagements will happen. I wanted to the QR Code to really stand out as that is still the best way to bridge the gap between print and digital to date.
We spend a huge amount of time designing the homepage of a site when that is statistically the least visited page on a website. Instead I have focused on the key page that the user search for, and tried to think about all the touch points the user would want to engage with on the page.
The choice in architecture is also governed by the S.E.O strategy and how we are creating content for various platforms to target each of the user groups where they are. The website then acts as a repository to host all documents/training materials etc for official purposes. This means a static website with social integrations would work perfectly as you create the content once and let the various managers of those touch points update the website when they need to.
In researching how one platform can handle multiple languages it really do expose me to the need for local content creators to update translations on major platforms, sometimes the translations produced are extremely formal and miss the mark.
