Guide to Building Your Web Presence

Maybe you don't have a website, but you think that you need one. Maybe you have a website, but you are frustrated by how difficult it is to keep up-to-date or its limited functionality. Either way, we can help you develop a web presence that will exceed your expectations!

Website vs. Web Presence

If you aren't familiar with web technologies, you are probably wondering why we keep referring to "web presence". The reasons are numerous, but let's start by differentiating between a website and a web presence.

Creating a website is easy! Numerous tools exist to help you put together a website. Dreamweaver and FrontPage are two very popular software programs that allow you to design your webpage using a handy graphical interface. There are also many sites on the web that will help you create your own website for "free" (if you don't mind advertising whatever product the owner of the site decides to display). Of course, these sites also give you fairly ugly domain names, like "http://your_organization.geocities.yahoo.com". What is "geocities" and why should that be "part" of my organization's domain name?

Although some technologists continue to confuse web presence with website, a web presence is more holistic, more involved, and, inevitably, more rewarding. Focusing on developing a web presence is a thought process that involves utilizing a variety of online technologies that present and promote you or your organization on the World Wide Web. While developing your web presence involves developing a website, it also involves the assessment of social networking websites (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, and MyChurch) on you or your organization.

There are many reasons to approach this process as developing a web presence. Here are the top five:

1. Approaching your online project holistically will maximize your cost-effectiveness.
2. Acknowledging the need for a web presence encourages you to think about your goals as an organic process, rather than as a construction project. Projects tend toward entropy. Processes gain momentum.
3. Pursuing a web presence expands the potential resources at your disposal.
4. Just like having a physical presence in a room, having a web presence portrays you or your organization as powerful, dynamic, and successful.
5. "Web presence" is more sophisticated than "website".

Outline of remainder:

1. Overview of the Process
2. Sand Traps and Water Hazards
3. Let's get started!