WordPress, Not Just for Blogs

Small businesses need a Web presence. It’s the central hub of your social media strategy – the place where you send everyone to find out more about what you do or provide.

The challenge for many small businesses is to obtain a high quality, professional Web presence that is affordable and easy to keep fresh with new content. On top of that, business owners are hearing that if they blog, tell stories and keep people aprised of what they are up to, they will help increase their chance of being found through search engines.

So how do you maximize your Web presence without breaking your marketing budget?

For most small businesses, building your Web site in WordPress will help you achieve what you are looking for. You can get a quality web site that is easy to update and maintain, support all the multimedia features you want to keep it interesting, while having the ability to add a blog if you are ready to take that step.

I’m still finding small business owners are confused as to what they truly need when it comes to the Web. What is necessary is a place you can call your home base. This home base is where you should be directing everyone through your calls to action in your marketing campaigns. This one place should tell your prospect why they want to do business with you. And, this one place should have everything you need to keep your visitors engaged. You should strive to combine your Web site and blog into one Web property that does it all for you. If you have two separate sites – one for your static Web site and one for your blog – you risk splitting your traffic between the two and you may just find yourself

If you are starting to develop a social media strategy, be sure this Web presence is solid so that when you point people to it from your LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or Google profile, you will be proud.

Why WordPress?

[/caption]I have finally moved all of my client’s Web sites to WordPress and have trained them on how to update their content. This has liberated many of them, helping them keep their Web site up to date with news, events and content that attracts their ideal clients. In my opinion, the following are the key benefits for building your Web presence in WordPress:

• It is easy for anyone to add, change and update content – This is a real benefit to businesses that sell services. Sharing your expertise through articles, a blog or other types of content keeps your Web site interesting and up-to-date and helps you demonstrate how you help your customers.
• The developer community has built an enormous number of quality plugins  – This enables you to include complex features, such as embedding video, audio, image galleries, flash, and secure email forms without having to know how to write code. This reduces development time, thereby reducing the overall cost of building the site. In my experience, if I search for “wordpress plugin xyz feature”, I usually come up with a plugin that does what I want.
• The business can grow their Web presence as needed – Start with a web site using only the page template and add a blog when you are ready for that option. Businesses don’t feel like they have to know everything about how their site will look to get something done. They can add new areas of pages (if the theme is set up to accomodate), change content and add the blog without a major redesign.
• The site takes less time to set up – The structure of the site can be set up in a much shorter timeframe than developing a web site using html. If the business owner has the time or another resource, they can enter the content themselves, reducing the overall cost of the site to create.
• WordPress templates extend the design capability – You don’t have to have just one page template for the whole site. You can create different templates and apply them to pages to create a customized look for various sections.
• WordPress sites are search engine friendly – You still have to ensure other SEO (search engine optimization) techniques are used, but the structure of the site (page names/categories/tags) are all used to help the search engines index the site better. Two plugins that help with this is All in One SEO Pack and Google Sitemap Generator which creates an XML sitemap supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.
• Your site can be mobile ready with a simple plugin – By installing the WordPress Mobile Edition plugin, you can support mobile devices such as iPhone, Blackberry Storm and other powerful smart phones without a lot of additional development. Mobile support has become a must for all web sites now given the number of people who access the Internet from their mobile device.

The following sites are all created with WordPress. These examples illustrate the creative sites you can achieve using this platform. In addition, even though these sites are a tad complex, they all support mobile devices.

So the bottom line is this: small business owners – take the plunge and get your web site built on WordPress. Many Web developers can do this for you. Find someone who understands the online marketing world and can help you set up a Web presence that helps you grow your business.

For a really comprehensive discussion about building a WordPress Web site, read the blog post Guide to Your First WordPress Web Site by Jerry at Web Hosting: Secret Revealed.