Tip #3: Your Domain Name is your most important asset
Tip #3: Your Domain Name is your most important asset
You might remember back in Tip #1, I mentioned using your domain name to redirect people to your LMS, ensuring that the address they use and remember is yours, not whatever system you're using at the time. Well let's look a bit closer at that.
Your organisation's Domain Name (MyCharity.org.uk) is your most important digital asset. Seriously!
With it, people can email you, find your website, which should always display your social media accounts, and it provides your donors with a trusted location to gift you their money.
Your domain names and sub domains (somethingelse.MyCharity.org.uk) aren't only good for pointing to existing pages on your website either.
You can create aliases
Aliases are domain names that act as a shortcut to another destination. And you can use them to cement your name and as the main thing people remember.
Back in Tip #1, I mentioned using an alias to list your e-learning courses, so that if you decided to change your LMS (Learning Management System) software, your learners would still be able to find your courses. This tip applies more broadly to your organisation as well.
Instead of displaying and printing your donation link as donationservice.com/mycharity, how about MyCharity.org.uk/donate? You set up an alias to point visitors of that address to donationservice.com/mycharity but you get to keep your name in the link you display on all your assets and email footers, and print on all your leaflets.
It works in a more obvious way too. Say you want potential donors and fundraisers to know you use JustGiving, but woudl rather keep charge of the link itself. You can create an alias that points people to your JustGiving page by creating a alias that's something like MyCharity.org.uk/justgiving and set the alias to point to the correct page on the JustGiving website. Same goes for Twitter, Facebook, and all your social network links.
What's more, just like the LMS tip, you're less likely to get stuck changing all your links when or if you decide to change providers or the online destination of your links - you just change where the alias points to behind the scenes. Nobody spots anything different.
You'll find guides for creating aliases (sometimes called Web Forwarding) in your web hosting provider or domain registrar's help pages. But if you need a bit more support, feel free to give me a shout and I'll take you through it step-by-step.
Until next time,
Kevin
Looking for support with your small charity's E-Learning, CRM, or Web & SEO? Find out more about my consultancy for small charities, and get in touch for a chat.