Are you “on” the web? Good. Is it working for you? For many the answer is no. The problem is likely how “on the web” is defined.
Web “presence” used to be simple: you had a company web site, period. Lots of effort and expense went into it too, fancy graphics, animations maybe, full spread of MetaTags and key words; it was a fully-loaded site. You were present on the web, a somebody!
But now, some time later, your presence (web results) seems to have faded, a problem that expensive web redesigns don’t seem to help. Why? Simple actually: the web has grown far beyond web sites.
Barak Obama is called the first internet President, but not because of his fancy website. John and Sara had fancy websites too. What sets them apart is Obama’s web presence: he was everywhere on the net, using all the various net channels and tools. McCain put up a website because he had to; it was more obligation than strategic decision.
Not so in Barak-land. Obama campaign managers saw what the web could do, how it could add Obama’s message to every citizen’s daily discourse. How? Simple: they used the web tools/channels available, all the them.
The Obama goal: create a sense of community and team, make people feel a part of something and collect personal information. Your goals are social, so you go to where people live: Facebook. Obama became the king of social networking. You go where people go for entertainment: YouTube. There is now the Obama YouTube Top Ten! You do podcasts, use Twitter, set up RSS feeds. A textbook example of creating web presence.
Maybe you can’t deliver a speech like Barak, or have press fawning on your every word, but you can use every tool he did! You can build web presence. Accept that the net has grown, keep your web site but explore all the other communication channels available at the click of a mouse. Show some curiosity and you can be a web somebody again.
