[This post is part of the How To Ruin Your Reputation on the Internet series, written by CEDAM Communications Intern Olivia Courant.]

Welcome to the “How to Ruin Your Reputation on the Internet” blog series.  This series will highlight common mistakes nonprofits make online that hurt their reputation or make their online communications strategies ineffective.  In other words, this series is about bad web practices.

—The Nonprofit That Never Posted—

Let’s begin with the following scenario: you hear about CEDAM and want to see what the organization is about.  You search for CEDAM on Google, find the website, land on the CEDAM homepage, and what do you see?  An announcement from 2005.  It is 2009.

Does CEDAM no longer exist?  Or is the staff just too lazy to update the website?  Either way, having old information on your homepage will drive away your audience and make your organization look less professional.  When a nonprofit sets up a website, online profile, or Facebook page, it must consider how much time and how many resources it has to put into its online presence.

TIP: If your nonprofit is too busy to maintain a full-fledged website, consider using only a Facebook page.  Having a Facebook page lets Internet users learn about your nonprofit, and at the same time it is easy for you to post news or events to show that your nonprofit is, in fact, still active.  This video will show you how to set up a Facebook page.

What are your experiences with running a nonprofit website or Facebook page? Share them with us in the comments section.