Why do you need an on-line presence?

I was quite shaken today – I was introduced to someone at a function, who said, “Yes,  yes, I know who you are I’ve got a lot of good information from your website.”

I’ll be the first one to confess that maintaining your website is a lot of work, like maintaining a garden in a wet summer.

Much of my work is in the public domain, so it is quite safe to upload mateiral for the general public to see. I get occassional enquiries or follwo-ups to particular issues.

This week I also received an invitation to lodge my profile on an international website for waste-management and environmental consultants. This is not my area of expertise but because my company developed  a series of envionmental and waste-management qualifications on the NQF and kept everyone updated through my swebsite, so spider or bot registered us as ‘experts’.

“We have come across your name and contact details through the internet. For our project-related international consultancy work, we are presently looking for qualified experts to support our project teams. According to CDM’s core business, we are particularly searching for experts with experience in the areas of waste, water & sanitation, infrastructure, transport and geotechnical engineering. In case you are interested in a future co-operation with CDM, we would like to kindly ask you to send us your most recent CV (if possible in English language) to the following e-mail address…”

The company identifies itself, is incorporated in Germany and has quite a website of its won. So the request seems legitimate enough – not that I’m replying.

The one lesson I have leanred is that you must have content on your website, not just a page that is really an ad. You have to provide some sort of value-add.

This seems to be a mantra of Web 2.0 – give and yu shall recieve.