Blogs and why I am a WordPress evangelist..and you should be too.

When was the last time your marketing efforts included a content calendar? For social media, content is hugely important. If you don’t have a content strategy, you don’t have a strategy, no matter what social media tool or platform you are using.

Also, if you have a website you should be incorporating an SEO strategy, which utilizes and employs key words. At the very least, you should understand what keywords are important to you and how competitive those key words are in the Google-sphere. Once you understand your key words, they should be used accordingly in your website and all of your social media platforms.

Keywords are one reason a quality content strategy is important.

That’s why I love WordPress. Its an easy content management tool that also integrates easily with your social media strategies.

Best of all, WordPress is that it free you from the reigns of your “web guy”. For example, when was the last time you wanted to make a simple text change to your site? I bet you called your “web guy” only to find out that he was on vacation and would be back in two weeks. When he got back from vacation, he was buried and it took him another week to execute your simple request. 3 weeks it took you to make a simple text change. Who is in control of your marketing? You or your web guy?   WordPress is more than a blog, its an entire website backbone. What people are doing with WordPress, which is a free application that you can host on your server is simply amazing. As importantly, you can make simple modifications like pictures and text without learning complicated computer languages like HTML. Most of the WordPress themes run around $100. If your looking for a highly customized site, you can still use WordPress, but the modifications will end up be in addition to that $100, but its likely to still be much more reasonable than a completely customized site. And here’s some of the best news about WordPress, because its open source, a lot of what you will need to customize your site is free. Someone has already written a program for say, a Google maps app. Or maybe you want to incorporate video, there’s an app (called a plug-in) for that too. So let’s see: easy to manage, affordable, and supports your other marketing efforts. Yep. That’s pretty much the best website scenario I can think of.

Here’s the cool thing: regularly updating your website with new content helps your SEO efforts, plus, SEO enhancements are available through WordPress. Now, let me clarify, that doesn’t mean you should get rid of your SEO guy, because for high rankings, you’ll likely need some power that simple on-page enhancement can’t exclusively do. That said, your WordPress site will have an SEO advantage that most sites do not.

And since I am the “Queen of Engagement” I can’t let this posting go by without saying that any WordPress page or posting can allow comments. This gives you one more chance to engage your audience and icing on the cake: one more chance to increase your rankings. Lots of businesses are concerned about this type of communication, but here’s what I remind my customers: people are already talking about you, wouldn’t you like to be in the loop and have an opportunity to address the topic of conversation?

So, whether you actually employ a blog or not (and I think almost EVERY business should), I encourage you to to create your site with WordPress. AND I encourage you to create a content calendar. Information that is updated regularly, directly on your site. Including Press Releases and product information. And don’t forget: utilize those keywords!

Let me know (on my WordPress blog) what you wish you could do on your site. I’ll let you know if its possible (the answer is probably: YES) and I’ll even direct you to a plug-in that will help you do what your looking for.