Put More Tickets in the Raffle Bucket...

"I need a website." 

This is a statement I hear a lot.  Being the web designer that I am, in most cases, I would completely agree.  Let's face it... we all have something we'd like to promote and commonly, the first thing we think of to do so is a website. 

A website can be the flagship of our external communications.  It's available 24 hours a day and seven days a week to answer questions and provoke interest.  Does anyone have a more dedicated advocate than that!?  But the truth is that a website alone is often not enough.  What many of us need is a Web Presence. 

Put more tickets in the raffle bucket...
We all want to be the top choice in search engine results, right? Right. When you submit your website you've taken the first step and ideally, all of your careful attention to meta tags, site maps, and more will launch you to the top!  But what else?  What if you had a blog?  Now you have two chances to come up in a search result.  What if you were also on Facebook or Twitter?  Three... four chances. 

Is everyone going to sit at a computer and search for you?  What if their friend passed along a coupon from your email campaign?   Maybe someone shared a tip or statistic from your Facebook page?  A picture is worth a thousand words so how much does a video say? 

The bottom line:  Our business (no matter what you are promoting) is communication.   To be an effective communicator you can't just think about what your audience wants to know but how they are going to find out.  How will you take your communication from a website to a web presence?