This week on the Overflow Podcast we take a look at a web community that Fluid Media has built called Baseballisms.com, as a way to demonstrate the need for adapting, organic, and of course Fluid approaches to your web presence.
Based upon this real case study with our own baseball community, we can attest firsthand to the fact that no matter how great the original concept for a web site might be, it will end up morphing and changing to meet the needs of the audience. If the site does not adapt, chances are the growth of the community will be severely limited.
Baseballisms started as a site where we attempted to collect email addresses to distribute daily messages containing public domain content. Instead it has become a fan based community where our content is supplemented by user generated content.
We believe that putting the web site on the Wordpress blogging platform, and now using the Thesis Template, we have been able to maintain a level of flexibility that would otherwise have been hampered by developing a traditional html web site.
Fundamental branding however is important to establish a strong foundation. This actually allows for flexibility to make modifications to the features and services provided by the web presence. Keep good branding tactics in mind from the start such as fonts and color choices, multiple applications of logo, a strong tag line .. all of these things can help to maintain a consistent message even while being fluid in other areas.
In the end, be solid and fundamental in developing your brand initially, so that it allows you the freedom to be fluid so you can adapt to what your community is telling you that they want you to be.
The opening and closing theme for the Overflow Podcast is called The Information Age, by Anthony Fiumano and you can find it at the Podsafe Music Network.
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