Make Your Website the Center of Your Digital Footprint

With all the various social media applications out there it can be easy to get your brand/business scattered and fragmented, socially speaking. I see many out there that will have a Facebook fan page as their focal point yet their other accounts don’t point to it, while others put the entire 2.0 load on one specific application and don’t network other platforms to gain a stronger foothold in the digital community.

Find your center. I believe that the foundation of a strong social media campaign begins with the website. There are many avenues to travel in this area. First you must have a place to host your site. There are many places you can find for this. I use Slamdot, they are local to the Knoxville area and have varying packages depending on your particular needs. There will be equivalent places like Slamdot in your area or you can just as easily find cloud based hosting.

As for the look of your website, you can, if you have the money, contract a professional. The price can range drastically depending on how you want your site to appear. There are more than a few platforms to choose from as well. I prefer WordPress. It’s very easy to use and configure. There are many free free templates out there and many more that come at a relatively low cost. Find what you are comfortable with and run with it. If you are an absolute beginner you may want to look into some of the free blogging sites like Blogger. I personally don’t recommend using Blogger for business but there have been some who have done quite well there.

Once you have your site, then you start pointing all your social media accounts to your site. Make sure that there are links on every application that directs traffic to this one focal point.

You don’t necessarily need a site with all the bells and whistles. As you can see I prefer a very simple approach, but again it’s all about what you are comfortable with. One word of caution, I recommend staying away from Flash based sites. Sites that are entirely based in Flash cannot be indexed by search engines. As a friend of mine once put it; “It’s like putting a blank piece of paper on top of a newspaper and then trying to read that newspaper.”

Flash is good, it can add visual value to your site. Just remember that less can be more.

Creating a social media network if done right will kind of resemble a map of London if laid out on paper. All peripheral applications will circle the one main site. Or, remember the saying, “All roads lead to Rome”. There you have it. Happy building.