Whether you’re in the printing business or another manufacturing industry altogether, having an online glossary is valuable.

For site visitors who are new to your industry, a glossary’s educational. If they see unfamiliar terms used elsewhere on your site – or on the web – they can access your glossary. And not for nothin’, if your site’s sprinkled with industry terminology that’s not commonly known, you need a glossary.

The hardest part is building one from scratch. But don’t let a little work stop you. This would be an ideal project for a summer intern. Going forward, you simply have to add new terms as needed.

Once you have a glossary, consider the opportunities to turn it into good content and have it point back to your site:

• Share a “term-a-week” on your social channels.
• Stage contests using obscure terminology in your social channels.
• Engage your online community in building your glossary. Add an online form for this; gather names and emails.
• If you’re doing educational videos, feature some of the terms now and again. Think how helpful mini-videos explaining “web-to-print,” “large format,” or “omnichannel campaigns” could be.
• Group a few terms together for a blog or enewsletter (binding terms, ink terms, paper terms).
• And what can be done in a blog or enewsletter can be done in a direct mail campaign to promote your company.

Bottom line? If you have a glossary, what’s it doing for you? It doesn’t need to just sit there. A good industry glossary is a bottomless well of content to be used in all sorts of ways.