Whether you’re a freelance photographer, or you’re getting into the cupcake business, branding your online presence is key to a good start. Branding is the art of presenting a cohesive view about your product AND company that emphasizes the values and message you want to present to your customers. Online branding is simply making sure that your whole package matches up, from your website to your Twitter account to your editorial voice.

Website design: This should evoke the same feeling as your product. If you’re selling handknit baby clothes and your website has images of construction workers, there’s a mismatch going on. (Dramatic example, but you get the idea.) Ideally, this should also match your offline presence, like your logo, business cards, etc.

Twitter name: As social media keeps on growing, this is increasingly important. Get a username that is your company name, or relevant to your company name. Keep it short (under 10 characters) as you’ll want people to retweet your Twitter name with your message.

Website / Twitter / Facebook “voice”: This seems like a given, but you should “sound” like what your target client is looking for in your brand. Remember, if you’re selling custom children’s clothes, the target for your online branding is the parents, not the children.

Domain: This should be as short and sweet as possible, but don’t stress about it. More than likely, someone will search for you by typing you or your business name into Google and clicking on the first likely link they see.

Which brings me to…

Your brand is everything that can be linked back to you. I can’t tell you how often I come across a good website, and a great on-brand Twitter feed and then search for that person or business on Facebook and find all kinds of unrelated things. Likewise, I’ve also been in position to hire people with great resumes and interviews, only to look them up on Twitter and discover very unprofessional tweets. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if it’s a photo of your drunk friends, or a link to your cousin’s baby doing handstands – if it’s unrelated to your brand, it’s off-topic and detracting from your brand’s message. Which is detracting from your business.

1. Simple setup.
It doesn’t get easier than this. Pick a domain, and go.

2. Easy updates.
Both from the content side and from the server side. If you can fill out a form, you can run your own website via WordPress. As for content, set up your static site with multiple pages and use the blog features to keep your site fresh and keep customer and clients aware of recent changes to your business.

3. Design control, as you like it.
Easy to pick and installl a theme to match your business. Hire a designer to work in your logo and some individuality.

4. Mobile support.
Both for viewing and updating. Add a new page to your site from the WP iPhone app, or post a new blog entry about some exciting news.

5. Administrative power for everyone.
Need a manager or assistant to handle the day-to-day of your website? WP allows you to setup contributors with ease.

A web designer is typically someone who deals with the graphical elements of a website. This is often limited to the images, style and layout – the visual package.

A web developer is someone who takes the graphical design and implements it into a working website. For small business owners, this person is also often the one who handles the administrative tasks that goes along with your website development and maintenance, like registering domains, etc.

Yes, it is entirely possible to have one person that performs both functions, but the question to ask is if they are effective in both of those roles. I know of one or two developers are that really good designers, but neither is of the same caliber as the best designer I know. And that designer is self-admittedly mediocre at developing a website effectively beyond the design. Sure, there are exceptions to every rule, but they are rare.

Do yourself a favor and take an honest look at your business before you hire any web person. Do you really need a nuts-and-bolts developer to built you a custom database-driven website for your online photography portfolio? Most likely not. Knowing the difference between design and development could save your business hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.