Choosing the right tools to do the job is something that any auto mechanic will tell you makes or breaks the job. If you have the right tools, you can work efficiently and get the job done without becoming frustrated or breaking something. The same is true for your marketing plan concerning your internet presence.
Today I will share some thoughts on some tools that I think will save time, money, and energy in implementing your web presence and allow you to keep it moving forward week after week.
Having a presence on the web can be an asset that costs almost nothing and can start to provide an awareness for your business. The one problem that most business owners have is that they don’t know how set up their site or how to maintain it. Worse yet, they don’t have the time to learn how or keep things going once it is up and running. That is where using the right tools can help you accomplish this with minimal effort.
To best use your time as a business owner or marketer, I would suggest using a WordPress blog instead of a static website for the following reasons:
- A static website costs money to have developed, built, and implemented. A WordPress blog can be installed in less than 5 minutes by anyone and is a free download
- Getting ranked on Google is of paramount importance so people can find you. This can be accomplished with a static website – if you know how. Google loves WordPress and WordPress is easy to optimize for google.
- A Static website costs money every time you want to update it. WordPress manages the back end administration so updating is simple and efficient.
- WordPress themes allow for any look, style, or feel to present your company in a professional manner without difficult graphic issues.
The bottom line is that once WordPress is installed and configured, you are freed up to do what you do best, run your business. Updating your WordPress blog is as simple as:
- Logging in
- Clicking “add new post”
- Typing, or copy/pasting, your post into WordPress
- Picking a category
- Clicking “post”
It is really that simple. Now you can spend your time developing your content, not learning complicated code or paying lots of money to have someone else do it. Not only does that give you control of what is going out to customers, but saves time, money, and energy.
Two things that you will need:
- domain name (example:www.youcompanyname.com)
- web hosting (a space on an internet sever that stores your files)
Domain names can be purchased for a one tme fee of between $12 – $20 for a year. Hosting is very minimal, as low as $6 – $8 a month. These can be purchased at a very minimal cost through a number of host providers. Here are just a few that are available:
- Bluehost.com
- Hostgator.com
- Godaddy.com
Here are a few quick tips on getting started. Check out the video below that shows how simple it can be to install WordPress and get it up and running with a webhost:
Here are some WordPress tutorials that will help you get the most out of WordPress:
http://www.youtube.com/user/mcbuzzvideo
Once you get your feet wet, here is a list of the must have plug-ins to optimize your WordPress blog to get the most out of it: (you can search for these from within wordpress when you are ready or click here to download a .zip file containing all these plug-ins – 6mb file)
- Facebook Social Plugins by Olivier Lussier ( allows using the Facebook “like” button in your poasts)
- wp-auto-tagger (helps auto tag your post for search engine optimization)
- Tweetmeme (allows re-tweeting of your posts to twitter)
- Sexybookmarks (allows sharing on multiple social networks easily)
- wp-super-edit (adds editing functionality to your dashboard)
- Contact form-7
- Google-analytics-dashboard
- Google-analytics-for-wordpress
- Google-sitemap-generator
- Platinum-seo-pack
- social-profilr-display-social-network-profile
- wordpress-23-related-posts-plugin
- wordpress-automatic-upgrade
- WordPress Database Backup
- wp-pagenavi
Next week I will post a short video on how to use a WordPress blog once you have it installed. Using the right tool for the job is essential in effective time use and strategy implementation. Now you have a tool that will allow you to get into the game without a huge overhead expense or wasting time.
Very interesting stuff.
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[...] the list of free options. To learn why you would want to use WordPress, checkout an earlier post: Using the right tools to get ahead. To see how easy it is to use WordPress, checkout: How to create a post in [...]
Thanks Cindy! You are awesome!