What’s so great about WordPress?
WordPress is web software used to build blogs and websites, and it has some distinct advantages – besides being free. Still, many people continue to think of WordPress as primarily a blog platform. So I asked my friend Bethany Siegler, who runs the online marketing firm UniqueThink to outline the top five reasons WordPress is the ideal tool for creating a complete, marketing-savvy website.
1. Maintain Your Site Yourself:
Changing Your Content is easy. WordPress uses what is called a Visual Editor (also known as a WYSIWYG – what you see is what you get), a toolbar with icons to automatically perform an action that would have previously required you to use code. You simply hit the B icon on the toolbar for bold and i is for italics. Pages and blog posts can be written without knowing any HTML! Personally, I find using the Visual Editor easier than creating a Word document.
2. Managing Your Content is a snap:
If you’ve heard the phrase Content Management System (CMS) and didn’t know what it meant, here’s my explanation: It’s a system that manages your content for you. OK, that is a bit basic, but really that is what it does. It organizes everything for you, allowing you to easily manage and quickly edit any and all of the content (copy, images, video and audio) you have used on your site. If you find a typo or want to change what it says on your About page, just go to your Pages section, look for the page titled About and click the edit button. Then you can fix or add content and make it instantly live to the world. No more waiting for a webmaster to fix that embarrassing error!
3. Search Engines love blogging software, like WordPress – but there is a reason for that:
Blogs are known to provide Fresh, Relevant, and Original Content. Typically folks add a lot of content in the form of blog posts. They are usually writing that content from scratch and it is usually unique content, specific to a topic or industry. When you are frequently adding new content to your site, the search engines will come back more often to see if you have anything new, and then index that content for you and potentially move you up higher in the search result rankings.
This is part of why I suggest – even if you aren’t doing a traditional daily blog – you can use the blog functionality automatically built into WordPress. An easy way to do this is to use the blog posts to write your Frequently Asked Questions. Next time someone asks you a question that you’ve been asked 100 times before, just write a post with the answer! And, #1 on this list makes it easy to add content, while #4 – below – is another reason you’ll love blogging.
4. Gets the word out: Distribution/Syndication
WordPress has been constructed so that when you post something to your blog, it automatically gets sent to the search engines. Instead of the way old school HTML sites worked, which was that you waited for the search engines to find you, WordPress finds the search engines. The way this is handled is by the creation of Real Simple Syndication (a.k.a. RSS Feeds). RSS literally feeds the information to the search engines. But instead of me explaining this to you, I suggest you watch this really simple video:
5. You are in control:
The nice thing about WordPress is a lot of the limitations of a traditional site are removed.
As long as you have an Internet connection, you can add a post, page, image, video or audio. You can even do this from your iPhone!
And, unlike traditional HTML sites, you don’t have to worry about adding a new page to your navigation menu – it is automatically added to ALL pages for you. You’re not limited by a webmaster holding you up, when you want to change content or to add a new photo to the site.
Though you may want to work with a wonderful web designer, like Eliana, to get your site a custom look, once she has done the initial design, you can maintain the main site content on your own. She gets to do what she loves – create beautiful sites – and you get to do what you want – get new content up there without being beholden to someone else.
Of course, there are some companies that are too busy to maintain the sites themselves. The nice thing is you can always hire someone – even without HTML knowledge – to make the changes and add new content. And, another level of control, built into WordPress is User Levels. You, as the site owner, may want complete access to everything on your site, but if you have an assistant who is adding content, you can restrict them to specific areas. For instance, maybe they can add content, but you have to approve it, before it goes live.
It’s all up to you. You can be as self-sufficient or hands off as you choose.
There are many more reasons, as well, but we’ll have to leave them for another day. We hope this gives you an idea of some of the many reasons we love using WordPress to build your complete website.
Bethany Siegler of UniqueThink.com helps build your complete online presence. Her focus is on finding cost-effective marketing solutions that allow you to be as self-sufficient as you prefer. WordPress definitely fits that description, and Bethany uses it to build full websites, as well as stand alone blogs. She can also introduce you to effective ways of connecting to and continuing the conversation with your audience, while creating unique opportunities for sales.
Bethany has created online marketing campaigns for musical artists as distinct as Frank Black (Pixies) and David Wilcox, software developers as diverse as Wild Divine and OfficeTime, and local independent businesses like The Video Station and Boulder Weekly. She has also represented major corporations like SONY and Budweiser, yet prefers to work with and find solutions for smaller companies.
Need more convincing? Call me and we can ascertain if WordPress is the best option for you.
