Honest Marketing Secrets

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Many of my clients have been clamoring for web sites. Right now. Practically while they wait, even. Now that’s just crazy talk.

Or is it?

Setting this blog up has given me ample opportunity to spend lots of time working with WordPress and learning many of its ins and outs.

As it turns out, building a site “while-you-wait” IS crazy talk if you don’t know anything about web design, installing scripts, or any of that. However, if you are technically savvy, the 10-hour web site is fast becoming a possiblilty. Now, of course, when i say ten hours, that’s a bit of stretch for a fully customized theme with logos and graphics etc., but the part that used to take 20, or more hours of painstaking coding can be all but eliminated now by using WordPress as the foundation of your site design.

Now all you have to do is concentrate on customizing the features, graphics and loading the content. Frankly, it’s enough to make a grown developer wriggle about a bit and even, just possibly, run naked through the streets drinking Ovaltine™ on a Saturday morning. Er sumpthin’ like that.

Anyway, the point here is that there are some really great reasons to use WordPress as a starting place for your brand new web site and here are the ones I can think of right now:

1. Major time savings in creating a consistent templating system for end users. It’s an instant foundation for a custom CMS (Content Management System)
2. Makes it a breeze for non-techy folks to add content (text, graphics, audio, video) without programming a custom interface. (Save days of programming time (or money paying a programmer) )
3. Creates a site that is automatically optimized for the search engines (with easily added, free plugins)
4. Update the look and feel easily with changes to the CSS, templates and widgets.
5. There are thousands of free and low cost, gorgeous themes available to start with
6. Easy to add new functionality at the drop of a hat with plugins
7. WordPress is free
8. Most WordPress plugins are free
9. WordPress is constantly being upgraded and bugs are fixed by the dev team almost immediately
10. Keeping spam off your site is a peace o’ cake using even the base installation and it gets even better with available, free plugins
11. A huge WordPress community is available to help you with answers should you run into trouble
12. So many marketing opportunities are aimed at WordPress blogs that a WordPress-based web site is a marketing no-brainer
13. Instant RSS feed for all your content. Now that’s a BIG deal!

OK, so that was actually 13 reasons. Just smile and nod with glee that you got 2 bonus reasons.

So how to get started? When I first thought about doing this I wondered if anyone else out there was doing it yet and if there were any easy and fast ways to do it. You need to do way more than just create a blog. You need an entire web site.

So I researched it and found that Tara over at Graphic Design Blog has already done a massive amount of work in this area and pulled together almost all the known information on creating a website with WordPress so check her post out posthaste.

If you are looking for more technical information about the nuts and bolts of editing the existing WordPress structure, check out Nick La’s post over at Web Designer Wall.

Additionally, since Tara published her CMS article, Freshout Development has published the Fresh Post - WordPress CMS Plugin that practically turns your WordPress installation into a CMS in one fell swoop. The only issue that I can see is that it may limit your design a bit and it’s a little on the technical side as far as getting it up and running and possibly managing it.

Also, you will sometimes need to limit areas of the site to members only and WP Members is another plugin not mentioned elsewhere that will help you with that.

While I was writing this I also realized that many folks are not able to pull all this stuff together and then run it and maintain it. I hadn’t originally thought of this when I started writing this post, but as it turns out, I have an answer for that too.

You want a website that’s totally optimized and perfectly designed and ready to work round the clock building traffic and I have only one answer for that.

You can go to the front of the line (yes it will cost a little, but way less than what I would charge) and get all the design and customizing and search optimization done automatically and have your new site up within about 48 hours (or less depending on the situation). I’m referring to the Blog i360 Site Management for Small Business Owners and it will pay for itself in short order if you are serious about your site.

ASC Blog i360 uses WordPress as the foundation of their system and I recommend it to all my clients now when they say they need a website immediately and they don’t know any HTML and don’t have time to learn any tech stuff and don’t know where to start. Frankly, you shouldn’t have to know all that tech stuff, unless you’re a geek like me and really dig it.

Update about ASC: they are no longer offering their original site building program and although their Authority Site Center system is still a great way to learn about building authority web sites, they don’t do the actual blog creation and maintenance for you anymore.

I’ve since found an even better resource for getting a new blog up and running extremely fast, with no technical skills needed and a HUGE amount of search engine and social marketing clout built-in. I recommend you give Blog i360 a look. They have an outstanding program and I really like the folks who created it, Deborah (@CoachDeb) and JP (@JPMicek) Micek. I’ll be writing a review of the system as well so watch for it.

OK, back to the regularly scheduled blog post…

I’ve decided to build my next site with WordPress and have started working on it already. It’s a secret for now, but as soon as it’s done I’ll post it for your review and we’ll see what you think.

If you can think of any other reasons to use WordPress (or not, for that matter) feel free to comment.

Thanks for reading and be well.

-Zack

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