Step Nine: Building Your Digital Presence

Your digital presence is your front door to the world.  You’ll attract a greater audience, including donors, if you present yourself well.  Because the technology to do this keeps changing, you—or whoever is building your site—will have to keep updating, too.

Your budget will help determine the look and functionality of your website.  The basic tool you will use to operate your site is a Content Management System (CMS).  It could be an open-source system that’s free or low-cost, such as WordPress, Drupal or Django, which you can customize yourself without hiring a web developer.  Or perhaps it’s a proprietary system, such as Clickability or Expression Engine, which you’d have to buy or receive as an in-kind contribution to your organization.  If you have deep pockets, you can hire a team of developers and designers to build a site from scratch.

Because you may be unable at the start to afford web developers, evaluate closely any offers of free or reduced-priced assistance from technology companies.  They may see your site as an opportunity to increase their expertise and add to their portfolio.  But you may find yourself captive to services that require regular retainers after your launch.

Explore websites that you like.  Then start by sketching a framework, known as a wireframe, with areas for the different kinds of content you anticipate. Don’t forget to include ways for readers to participate—either by comments, posting photos, or contributing stories. Will you moderate these submissions? 

Building a site is like buying a car.  A Honda may not be a NASCAR winner, but it’s reliable, while maintaining that fancy Maserati can be pricey. 

At a minimum, most startup online newsrooms need a place for articles, an “about” section explaining the site and its staff and where it’s located and links to their social media presence.  That could include a Facebook page, a Twitter account, maybe a place to sign-up for an electronic newsletter.

You should also think, early on, about offering ways that users can post their own classifieds or display ads. Remember to create a page where you will identify funders and/or solicit donations.

As your site grows, you may need to expand to include topic pages, archives, data libraries, donor pages, self-serve ads and aggregation tools for other news items.  It’s important to have a plan in mind for expanding your site, three months and more down the road.
 
Many organizations launch a very basic site in the first month.  That can be useful for introducing readers to the kind of content you aim to produce and collecting email addresses from those wanting to receive an electronic newsletter.  As your content and audience grow, the site may be ready for a new design and architecture by professional web developers.

You can find substantial tutorials on J-Learning.org, including News Site in a Box, which will provide nuts-and-bolts guidance to building a website.