by Oluwatobi Soyombo

In your effort to boost your brand effectiveness (personal or corporate), it is important that you have an online platform of yours to communicate with your potential audience. Facebook, twitter and other Social Networking platforms might not just be sufficient to earn you a great online brand credit. Having a website earns you trust before your audience. Often times, when I come across adverts on Facebook, the first thing I check for is a link to the website of the sponsor. I see no reason why you should advertise your product on the web without actually owning a site where people can get more information about you or your products.

This is the 21^st Century, and it appears to me that everyone serious about online effectiveness must have a website/blog. Just as shelter is an inevitable need in real life, a website or a blog is also an inevitable tool of an effective online campaign. Today, my mission is to acquaint you with some great reasons why you need to own a website/blog.

• Share your Knowledge or thoughts with the world: To an individual, owing a blog can serve as a medium to share what you know with the world. I believe in contributing to the World Wide Web, so a website a blog makes you achieve that easily.
• Cheaper Advertisement: Now that more people are getting online in recent times, a website/blog provides a cheap way of advertising your products and services. Compared to Traditional Marketing means, a website is far cheaper. While it will take you millions of naira to run a TV advert which might not even captivate viewers; it usually cost less than that to get a very good website up and running for a year.
• 24/7/365 Access: Another great advantage of having your own website is that your audience have full access to your site any time of the day, month and year. For now, no other advertisement means boasts of this great advantage other than the World Wide Web.
• Get closer to your Customers: To a business entity, a blog makes you close to your customers and it keeps your customers close to you. You will achieve this as long as you keep your blog or website updated.
• Earn Reputation: keeping a blog or website increases your reputation both online and offline, just as I stated in the opening paragraph. I can remember dealing with a Chinese company sometimes ago. They almost lost confidence in me just because I didn’t have a website back then.
• Earn: To an individual, you can make additional income from your website by allowing advertisement companies display their ads on your website. A good example of this is Google Adsense. I consider this the least reason to own a blog/website. However, you can make it a top priority depending on what your web goals are. For a company or Public figure, allowing adsense on your site can be disadvantageous to your site.
• Unlimited Worldwide Access: Unlike a TV or newspaper ad, a website/blog has the potential of being seen worldwide. No geographical boundaries of any kind except the one you define yourself.

There are many more reasons why you need to own a website. It is unfortunate that the people of 21^st century have left website ownership for geeks. It doesn’t matter whether you are a geek or not, all that matters is the quality of your content.

Amazingly, you really do not need the help of a web developer to get a “starter” weblog. It was a pardonable excuse to blame your inability to own a blog or a website on high prices some years ago. Today, everyone who wishes to have at least a blog has the free opportunity to. There are now numerous free platforms you can sign up for. Next week, I will start discussing each one of them in detail. Till then, keep Evolving!

Oluwapelumi