Recently, I’ve been giving a lot of thought about the processes we lead clients through at my place of work when they come to us for online services. We are full service agency, and we have great experience in house in relation to branding, social media, design, and web development. My own role changes every day, but in general I’m the geek–the guy you go see to make your thingamajig digital.

Most of my current blog readers, I suspect, know me as a photographer, but the truth is I just goof with this stuff for fun. Get me going, and I am downright zealous about the power of online and democratized communications to change the world–I’ve seen it in my lifetime.

I started goofing around with this stuff when I was about 13. I used to go to the computer lab at Hampton High at noon hour and use the teacher’s computer, because it was the only one that had a modem. I would connect to local bulletin board systems that people had set up and argue and discuss things with people in online forums. At the time, greater Saint John had a pretty cool scene with maybe 20 systems running and a few hundred active users.

I developed my first website in 1996. It was a monthly literary thing that published the poetry and short stories I was writing along with some other friends and people I communicated with online. It wasn’t exactly a hit, but I learned a few things and I had a few visitors. I built other sites growing up, and in 2001 I went to work full time as a web developer at Media Planet.

I’ve seen a lot of changes in the few years, and lately social media is all the buzz, but to those that have been keeping up social media is just the logical extension of what people have always wanted to do online — share and connect. Give and get.

But this isn’t about me and my growing long in the tooth. It was with those changes and experience in mind that I set down to encapsulate what were, for me, the absolutes. Like a lot of creatives, developers, and agencies, I struggle with our reactiveness–order taking–instead of giving a beginning point, because–at least in our geographic market–a whole strategy for being or marketing or engaging online seems to be sorely lacking, and I think it’s vital to being a successful company or organization or–at leat for those entering the workforce–a successful person.

I came up with these 16 things I know to be true for any client that wants help, whether it’s with Twitter or Facebook or Youtube or building a website or online advertising or whatever it might be that happens in my world–because at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what the channel is. A year from now the channel will have changed–maybe it’ll be Bummpy or Flitker or Dumpdoodler or whatever it is. I wanted to propose some ideas of what I know to be true about companies and organizations just being online.

(I claimed all those site names first!)

I’m going to give these to some other people where I work, and I’m sure on some points there will be disagreement and debate. I’m hoping that here, on this blog, there might also be some disagreement and debate. Please, if you work in this industry, I’d really dig it if you carefully considered these points and provided some feedback.

I’m open to being wrong, and I really hope there are more thoughts I haven’t put here that people can add. But I’m not open to doing things half-cocked anymore. A complete approach to an online presence is the only approach that will work. I’m tired of seeing hundreds of hours spent on developing elaborate site maps and then struggling to fill them with content, or seeing organizations spending oodles of money on a social media strategy without having any human resources willing and able to be social.

So here are my 16 theses.

1. You do not need a website. You need a web presence.

2. Your website must be the hub of your web presence.

3. A web presence consists of an eco-system of web properties on which you may assert varying levels of influence.

4. The ‘you’ we are talking about is a human. On the web, the construct of the company only serves as a way of identifying humans with like minded goals or ideals.

5. Companies and organizations do not have missions or visions, and they do not have a voice. An effective web presence facilitates the exchange of human interactions.

6. Set your humans free. The humans in your company are your company on the web. If they are not on the web, your organization cannot be effective on the web.

7. If you have nothing to say, we can’t help you.

8. If you have something to say, your web presence is always a good place to say it. That is not to suggest it is the only place or the best place, but only that it is always a good place.

9. If you decide to say something using web tools available to you, say it in a conversational tone. Anything else makes me think you’re hiding something.

10. People will only care about what you have to say if you are giving them something. You must give an opportunity to learn, connect, feel, or trade. Some combination of the four is preferable.
^{http://bit.ly/9vtSCF}

11. How you say something is what you say. The visual impression of your website will forever color what you have to say.

12. The structure of your web presence should be such that it facilitates giving, but if necessary it is better to give without a structure than to create a structure without giving. Creating content is always more important than creating structure.

13. It is more useful to create a structure for existing content than to create a structure to be filled with yet-to-be-created content. Start with giving.

14. If you don’t know what to give, start with listening. People will tell you what to give if you make yourself available.

15. If you want us to help you create a successful web presence, and then walk away, your web presence will fail. If you start giving, your giving will become so successful it will require new and better ways of giving. This is the most important point.

16. The stakes are high, but the risk of not having a web presence that is giving and engaged with your market community are higher.

Your thoughts?