Web Presence Management

A web presence is a location on the World Wide Web where a person, a business, a community, or other entity is represented. 

Examples of a web presence for a business, or other professional entity, include: 

• Corporate websites
• Microsites
• Pages on review sites
• Wikipedia pages
• Social media points of presence 
• LinkedIn company page and/or group
• Facebook business/brand/product page
• Twitter account

Note, a business does not always have control over all of their web presences. 

Individuals can also have a variety of web presences associated with them like personal websites, blogs, profile pages, Wikipedia pages, or social media points-of-presence. (An individual’s social media account may also count as a point-of-presence for their employer, especially when acting as an employee brand ambassador.)   

Every piece of a company’s web presence is associated with a unique web address to distinguish one point-of-presence from another.

Web presence management is the process of establishing and maintaining a digital footprint on the web.

Businesses require an understanding of their digital footprint to 1) protect themselves from risks online and 2) strengthen their brand. Web presence management is strongly associated with social media governance and compliance. This comprehensive digital approach allows companies to mitigate risks, neutralize potential problems (like counterfeiters), and create a uniform brand presence which customers can trust as it is consistent across the web.

Through web presence management, companies are able to determine three different threat vectors: non-compliant POPs, attached tools to POPs, and unknown POPs. Companies can also implement regulatory compliance, reduce corporate risks, and strengthen brand standards with web presence management. 

Web presence management is the discipline of determining and governing:

• Adherence to corporate policy and brand standards
• Adherence to regulatory compliance
• Which platforms are hosting corporate, brand and community engagement
• The inventory of personal or corporate web presence (e.g. partners or advocates).
• Where on the web a business and any relatable assets are represented.
• Where on the web a business and any relatable assets are impersonated or pirated.
• Who has control over which web properties.
• New web properties which are not in the personal or corporate inventory (e.g. someone creates a new presence).
• Authorized and unauthorized changes to the creation (e.g. branding) of a web presence.
• A workflow for creating a web property that follows its corporate standards.

The purpose of a web presence management system is to manage the web presence of a business. This includes the collection of domain names, websites, social media, and other digital accounts where it is being represented (authorized or unauthorized). A web presence management system generally offers the following key functions: 

• New presence discovery
• Inventory management 
• Change detection 
• Data collection features
• Stakeholder coordination 
• Compliance management