Building a Web Presence

Written by: Tom Beach, Executive Director & Vice President of The Toolbox, Inc. and Video Director at the October 22 Non-profit Toolbox event.

What is your homepage?

I read an interesting post on Hubspots blog titled “Why Coca-Cola Says Their True Homepage is Not Coke.com” by Jason Walbridge. He starts the article with a quote from Anne Carelli, Digital Communications Manager for Coke. She said:

“Several years ago, Coke realized the Coke.com is not their home page – it is Google.com, digg.com and Youtube. Take the time to keep abreast of what is showing up for your brand in these new social sites and search engines.”

We have advocated this for years and use this theme in many of our presentations.

On the Web, Content is King

…and it shouldn’t all be on your website. The image above is the basic model we present as a great way to start building a presence on the web. Yes your website is important and is the anchor of your presence on the web. Your blog should be attached to your site and is a great way to add content, show your expertise and links to other sites. It should be the core element in your marketing strategy. Linkedin, facebook and twitter grow your network and can add links back to your site (and Google likes links). Content on YouTube, flickr and you could add slideshare (if you do presentations) are portable and can be embedded by other sites as well as embedded back on your site (creating more links).

We believe that this is how you need to market on the web today. This simple model gives you six more places on the web that you can be found, and will all link back to your web site.