The Gulf Coast Benefit website: riding it right

Enter a tweet from @LAist directing the viewer to a  Gulf Benefit website, twitter account, and hashtag.

Their website functions exactly how it should. It nicely taunts us to Share. Attend. Donate and tell your friends! Donate and share!

After a short blurb, this website's homepage encourages the viewer to RT, digg, stumble, share, donate, see what people are saying, or watch video (live streamed during the event).

You can do all of this without scrolling down into the depths of the tubes. (Everyone reading this is challenged to Stop the Scroll. An article on that challenge later.) More website viewers leave a page because they don't know the message, the navigation, their role in your product/service. The message here was clear - they direct you in ten different directions, where you choose how to share and spread the word. For a one-off event, that is a great message to blast.

If you're in the midst of a fundraising drive, then the Donate button should dominate your homepage. If you are selling advance tickets, like this Los Angeles classical theater company, have no fewer than three visible links directing your viewer to the ticketing system.  When you need short-term support and audience for a one-time event, you win by engaging the viewer, then transforming the viewer into a participant, a stakeholder in your success. Share and attend.

The Gulf Coast Benefit engages the viewer in a few simple ways, including a positive spin ("On July 1st, in the spirit of Independence Day, music venues nationwide united"). Partnership, however, is where they are most succesful. The homepage automatically makes you a partner in their -- and thus, the Gulf's -- success. After all, who doesn't want to help the Gulf?

It's the partnership with the viewer that works so well for one large event in the sprawl of Los Angeles. With so many places to go and so many places to eat here, word of mouth consistently draws more people than you think.

Call it the age of interaction, video games, reality TV, the internets and their tubes or whatever else, but your audience now wants to be partners. They want to be buds. They want to know about your breakfast (worst Twitter topic) and the cute things your kids do (great Twitter topic). Throw some info about a Gulf Benefit into the mix and you reached another potential supporter.

Your audience likes to share: let them! Encourage them. And for goodness sake, tell your audience your hashtag. (Another tangent for another day.)