Revision of Week 3 from Wed, 2011-01-05 10:18

Week 3: Web presence

Objectives:

• To understand the importance of a web presence
• To identify the key goals of having a web presence for your project
• To learn some inexpensive ways to create a web presence

Readings:

Assignments:

• Make-your-own-case study: Identify an enterprise with an effective web presence. Post a link under the Forum prompt and tell why you think it is effective (including relation to the enterprise's mission and marketing mix)
• Think through the elements of our own enterprise's web presence
  • Write a post in the Forum prompt for week 3 about what type of web presence your enterprise should have; include information such as how your mission and vision will be reinforced by your web presence, a brief outline of your web site's content, and what tools make most sense given your goals and budget  (Note: This assignment can be expanded into your project for weeks 5-9 by actually building a web presence for your enterprise.)

Every enterprise that needs marketing, whether a business or not, should have some kind of web presence. It doesn't have to be a full-blown commercially-produced web site; in fact, it could be as simple as a Facebook page or blog. In today's world, there are a million free, easy ways to create a web presence.

One thing to think about early on is getting one or more domains (or URLs) for yourself. You can do this at sites like Register.com or GoDaddy.com.

As the web has gotten more crowded, getting a good domain has gotten more difficult. For that reason, many enterprises reserve domains that they may not be using right now but foresee using in the future. When choosing a domain, consider the following:

• Shorter is better.
• Avoid domains that are hard to communicate or easy to mistype, such as those with a hyphen or underscore or ones that include words that are difficult to spell.
• Make sure you don't violate others' trademarks.
• Your domain doesn't have to be your exact business name. It could be descriptive of your benefits or even a more abstract (but hopefully memorable) word.

Here are some tools that can help you establish a web presence (in rough order from super-easy to more complex):

• Hosted social media site
  • Facebook (set up an organization page)
  • Twitter
  • MySpace
• Hosted blog
  • Wordpress
  • Blogger
    
• Hosted wiki
  • Wikispaces
• Other hosted site
  • Google site
• Cheap hosted site
  • Register.com
  • GoDaddy.com
• Piggy-back on someone else's server; you probably know people who have small businesses that host their own web sites. It's pretty easy to have them host yours too.
  • WP CMS
• Any of the above hosted on your own server - Ultimately this will give you more control over your web presence but it is more costly to set up and maintain.

If is worth noting that for many of the externally hosted options above, you can arrange to have your own URL  so that it looks like "your" site, which is well-worth doing for many enterprises. (For example, you can have a blog hosted by Blogger that has an address of www.mybusiness.com/blog instead of www.blogger.com/mybusiness.)

Please add comments below with other suggestions and/or your own experiences with various options.

Another consideration for small businesses is finding cheap, but high quality graphics to use on your site. Make sure to be mindful of copyright issues! Open-licensed content (e.g. licensed under Creative Commons) is a good option for small start-ups. Flickr is a good place to look for photos. (Do an advanced search and indicate that you want Creative Commons licensed results for commercial use if that applies to you.) WPClipArt and the Open Clip Art Library are other sites to use. ___ has man sets of icons, but make sure to read the terms and license conditions for each.

In addition to having a web site, make sure that you are findable other places on the web, for example:

• on Google maps (assuming you have a physical location)
• on any directories that are relevant to your business (e.g. restaurant guides, wikis,etc.)
•  

Once you have your "presence" on the web, you need to think about content. The best web sites provide valuable content to customers or potential customers.

Think about what a visitor to your site might find valuable. At a minimum, make sure to provide:

• your mission and vision
• a description of what you do (products, services, etc.)
• contact information
• who you work with
• where you operate
• links to any social media
• policies, terms of use, legal stuff

Beyond that, consider including:

• pricing
• demos
• support information
• free resources
• success stories (testimonials, case studies, etc.0
• press releases and press coverage
• events listing

Whatever web presence you establish, make sure to keep it up to date and add new content regularly. Nothing says "dead business" like a web site that is obviously out of date or neglected.

Thisis just the tip of the iceberg in terms of web presence, but hopefully it will give you some ideas for establishing a web presence that will generate positive momentum for your enterprise. (And we'll talk more about social media and user-generated content in Week 5.)