If I were a financial planner do you think I’d counsel you to invest all your money in one company’s stock?

Let’s hope not.

Just as financial planners teach principles of diversification—and in these times, even mitigation of losses—as a business communication professional I teach the importance of maintaining content on a variety of online platforms.

Last year, whether you know it or not, with about 75% of the online search market, Google replaced your home page as your corporate Web site. As online searching increases, securing top results in search engines will be a priority for any business communicator.

The Internet is really the new Yellow Pages.

So how do you control as much of the search results for your keywords, products, people and services as possible?

The way to do it is to maintain content on a number of different platforms and Web sites.

Your home page is still most important. But it’s not the end all, be all. Rather, it should be a type of news portal site that links the visitor to everything else that’s going on. It should include some basic bullet points about your business, links to recent blog posts and press releases, as well as multimedia (either hosted on your sites or the various social media platforms available).

A bare bones Web 2.0 approach should include:

• Corporate home page
• Blog
• Online newsroom with RSS feed
• Twitter account
• Facebook page
• YouTube account
• Flickr account
• Online advertising (pay-per-click and banner ads)
• With social media bookmarks and widgets available throughout

By diversifying your communication platforms, you reap the benefits of more than one ticket to the game, so to speak. The more sites you’re on, the more likely you are to control more of the search results for your keywords, products, people and services.