Last  week I posted more in depth explanations of  the first two points on my original 12 point check list for developing your web presence.

Today, we’ll look more at the third point on the list: establishing the priority of your online platforms and the key elements that you’ll need to focus on as you develop them.

Photo Credit: wockerjabby

The Paradox of Choice

There are simply more platforms than you could ever hope to maintain. Whether websites, blogs, personal social networks, fan pages, Wikipedia entries, professional directories, or any combination of those, the choice is rather overwhelming…and it keeps growing every day!

The good news is that you really only need to choose and fuel a handful of these, perhaps even just a couple, to start building a web presence that will deliver tangible results.

How?

Pick the right platforms, then use them in the most time efficient and effective ways. 

What qualifies as the ‘right platform’ depends very much on your content, communication, and most importantly your end objective. Often, as in the paradox of choice, less can be more. It certainly makes sense to set out with only platforms that

For help in this area, tweet with the #CreatorQs hashtag or ask away on Facebook. Myself – or a cohort, of equal or greater value – will get back to you pronto (cowboy talk for within 24 hours).

Once your platforms have been decided upon, it’s time to move on to the key elements you choose to build into them. Identifying these will help concentrate your web presence development efforts on the factors that matter most, minimizing time and maximizing results.

In Your Element

How do you know what these key elements are?

This can be difficult to prioritize, especially if you haven’t spent a whole lot of time around social media, so here are some question sets to guide you:

Outcomes

• What is the primary result that you want from your web presence?
• From this, can you track back through the process of achieving it and extract secondary element goals?
• At the start of that process, what inputs will a given platform need to get things rolling?

Example: You’re an artist with striking visual pieces available for purchase. The primary goal is to showcase your works and make sales. Tracking back from the sale, you’ll obviously need clear, simple transaction buttons in order to prompt and process payments. But people need to be stimulated to start that process, so you’ll also want elements that ensure prominent placement of high quality images, such as gallery sections or the ability to quickly pop images out to a larger version. And perhaps potential buyers would like to see what’s popular with others, as they make their decision, so a further element to add could be a rating system or a social network plug in that shows comments for each piece.

Tools

• What flexibility do you have with your ability to edit content? 
• Will your ability to edit content limit the elements you can select? Do you need to enlist help to incorporate the key elements?
• Have you explored the available tools (e.g. WordPress widgets, Facebook social plug ins, embedded media) so that you know what can be achieved? 

Extra Tip: Researching other sites in your field will allow you to draw out the best and worst of what can be done with your web presence. It may also make clear an area that has been critically overlooked by your industry, giving you a clear priority to exploit as you plan out your key elements. 

Photo Credit: Vitamin Sea

The big picture here: be present in as many of the online locales inhabited by your audience as time allows, as long as you can put enough into the platform to offer that audience some value.

If you can’t commit the required level of work to any given platform, better to have no profile there at all than an out of date one that leaves fans feeling abandoned. Concentrate your efforts on growing the core platforms that you select, using the key elements that drive towards your long term web presence objectives. By having a clear understanding of what moves you in the right direction and what is simply window dressing, you’ll be making the most of the time investment that goes into your online world.