Live content is the fastest way to build “street cred” for a small business.  Having customers interact with your content of your business by text(twitter), photos, or Facebook is a powerful usability factor(ufactor).  Usually, this was left to the big-boys, but today anyone can communicate live information.

For websites, I believe this is the key ingredient Drupal brings to the table.  Static content is done and needs to be minimized on a site.  With Drupal you can create multi-faced user content that is separated by the roles within your business.  You can have people access content by an “Intranet,”  while at the same time a customer can update content.  The key strength behind this is that additional energy is not left only to just a website developer.  Energy now comes from everyone who interacts with content.  Just like Facebook, all you need is for people to log into a site and all actions are used to update the content.  Content becomes a living document instead of static information.

The growth of app stores have shown this to us the most.  People basically find apps more usable than many websites.  Why? They add a “live” interaction to content.  This is what people expect when they download an app while being the Fail point of many websites.  Social media has shown us that information is more relevant and brings the most attention if one believes what is seen is “live.”  Being able to keep content alive by adding to the live content strengthen this concept even more.

How does this effect a small business?  Services from a small business need a method where people can add energy to it.  Lack of energy on a service also shows the business what needs to be stopped, or repackaged.  No longer is this energy on the shoulders of a web developer or designer.  A developer today only point to something that they would want more energy behind, like an ad in Google.  Nevertheless, true energy is generated by people interacting with an idea.  Having a UI for behind and in front of the “curtain” will place you quickly to the top of the web.  It will open doors just because a person will believe your business is more accessible and usable.