Hi Virginia,

In my humble opinion you should have one website and one Facebook page, if for no other reason than reducing your web maintenance and updating tasks. You can resolve the issues of being "Found" on the web by optimization of your one site. You can also retain your three domain names if you find them valuable, and simply redirect any inquiries on those domains to your main site. You would want to do that anyway for a while so that any linked sites, print references, etc. have a while to be updated. Personally, for the cost of retaining the other two domains, it is worth keeping them. Before swinging the axe I would really become familiar with your website's statistics and those of your Facebook pages. Understand who is accessing your sites, How they are accessing your sites, and Where they go on those sites. In addition to what you host can give you I would strongly recommend setting up Google Analytics to monitor your site(s) activity. It is super easy to use and provides a huge amount of information about site usage and about the visitors to your site. Using Analytics will help you figure out how people get to your website, what search terms or phrases they use, etc. It can help you optimize the site to drive more traffic to it. Go to: www.google.com/analytics

I think you will find that your users, fans, etc. will be more appreciative of the single source of information than with the multiple choice approach. You can essentially migrate all relevant content to the one site and perhaps attract more guests to the other information at the same time. Of course a well designed website will also do wonders here and make navigation easy and user-friendly. As for Facebook - take a look at what your peers are doing with Facebook. I find Facebook more effective for the social networking and immediacy of it. I would not look at it as a substitute for information on your website but as a supplement to the web experience. You can direct guests from your website to the Facebook page for example, when you want them to find program updates, volunteer updates, messages about upcoming or recent events, posted photos from those events, etc. This is what Facebook works well for. The core content about your two properties, development information, the Foundation, the Society, etc. should remain on your website. This will make it easier to manage the content, keep it current, avoid cross-posting, reduce errors due to multiple sites, etc. Using Facebook for more immeadiate communication will also work well because of the fairly temporary nature of most Facebook content. Users of Facebook expect the content to change and remain current, as well as to be able to contribute their own content and post photos, so it is best to use it that way.

Most of all Have Fun! The great thing about all of this is that the media is flexible and easy to change. The more familiar you are with it, the more you can play with the medium to meet your needs.

Cheers,

Larry Fisher
Museum Planner, Designer, Imagineer
6 Belvedere Drive
Bristol, Rhode Island
02809
p:(401) 253-5335
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On 1/26/2011 11:20 AM, Virginia Bowman wrote:

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Hello, all -

I am a newbie in the field working for a local heritage society that runs two historic house museums. Currently we have 3 separate websites and 3 separate facebook pages. (One for each house and one for the society.) Honestly, not much has been done with them and they aren't generating much interest.

So, my first question is, do you think it's better to have multiple sites or consolidate to one for the society with pages for each site? ( We own and operate one site and just operate the other for a foundation, if that makes a difference.)

Anyone have experience with multiple sites? Any other opinions or advice?

Thanks,

Ginny
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