I was just reading a short post from the folks at BusinessBlogConsulting.com called More Benefits of WordPress for Sites other than Blog. They talk about whether it’s prudent or not to create business blogs using the WordPress platform.
As this post points out -
- Because WordPress is such a popular blogging platform,it’s easy to find developers to work on it. If you need something customized for your particular website, you’ll have a broad choice of developers to pick from on eLance.com or Rent-a-coder.com, all for a very competitive fee.
- You can easily make your WordPress website interesting and interactive through the use of plugins of widgets. Thousands of these snippets of code exist already, and it’s very easy to learn how to install them, even if you know nothing about programming.
But I think the most valuable benefit of the WordPress platform is that an individual without any programming skills or vast Internet knowledge, is able to add to and maintain their own website with very little help. Unlike the websites of old, no special software is needed to access the website. It’s as simple as using your browser, clicking on the Login link, entering your userid and password, and voila, you’re in!
Within minutes, after accessing the multitude of WordPress tutorial materials, you’ll be composing your first article or post. And, if you ever get hung up and can’t figure show to do something, just go to Youtube and search through all of the helpful WordPress video tutorials people have created to help you solve a particular problem.
Also, important is the amount of “professional” WordPress themes that are available for free or a nominal charge. As blogs and blogging have matured, they have gone from just the “cutesy, cuddly” templates to a more business-like “look and feel.”
Although you can still get the whimsical themes that you might use for a personal blog, you now have a large choice of business, magazine, or media blog themes that are more suitable for a business. Just use your favorite search engine and type in “business blog theme”, “Wordpress business blog template”, “magazine blog template for Wordpress”, you get where I’m going.
With the popularity, ease of use, and accessibility that the Wordpress blog platform has provided to the average person who is not a computer expert, it is a great solution for building a professional online presence, especially for small businesses and budding entrepreneurs.
Just take a look at a Wordpress blog that I created for one of my small business customers. Since 1999, the Lawrence Group’s website was a traditional, static website…really no more than an online brochure. Besides a few minor edits each year, it was virtually the same website since it’s creation. Now?! Each week valuable content is being added to the website and its web traffic numbers are exploding.
Talk to me! Are you a small business? Do you have a blog, a traditional website, any online presence at all? What questions do you have?
Tags: wordpress blog, wordpress blog business themes, wordpress blog for business, wordpress business themes
February 26th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Excellent post. I completely agree with your points about the Wordpress platform as it is easy for people to use and offers a huge number of facilities at the same time.
Fred Roberts’s last blog post..Know How To Make Sales On eBay
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:01 pm
I also love Wordpress–especially because of its functionality and ease of use. The vast amount of Plugins makes it such a flexible platform.
In terms of business blogging, it’s especially helpful to have a platform where you don’t have to spend a lot of your precious time fiddling with code and making your site look like you want it to. Wordpress does a lot of that heavy lifting so that business owners can focus on more lucrative activities. (That is, if tweaking, designing and setting up Wordpress blogs isn’t your business!
)
Christine’s last blog post..Copyright Basics for Small Business Owners
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:33 pm
I just integrated a blog into my new website with Expression Engine. While Wordpress is good for managing blogs, and it can be used to manange other areas of a website, Expression Engine is meant to be a full content management system so it provides a little more flexibility than Wordpress.
Blogs are an excellent way to add value to a website and keep it fresh. I own a design agency, so I post articles about marketing and dealing with designers. I think the hardest part, starting out, is getting people to your blog and getting them to comment on articles.
I would definately recommend integrating Wordpress or Expression Engine into a website if you don’t have html knowledge. If you have to contact a web developer every time you want to make a change, not only will this cost money, you will be discouraged from updating it. Search engines and humans love fresh content, so while it may cost more upfront to integrate a CMS, it is worthwhile in the long run.
Mandy Porta’s last blog post..Dramatic Shift in Marketing Reality
March 2nd, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Mandy, I’ve also used Expression Engine as a content management platform. It’s excellent, as well, just not as popular as the Wordpress platform.
March 5th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
While I’ve blogged on and off in the past, I’ve only recently started doing it more often – both for my day job and my own site. At first I thought it was a chore but I’m finding that if I try to keep it short and sweet I’m more likely to do it more often!
I was recently at Wordcamp and learned that all word press templates are not created equal. Some are more SEO-friendly than others and it’s sometimes worth paying a little more to get something that will give you more traffic.
Of course it goes without saying that not all free word press templates are bad and not all premium ones are good
. However, it’s definitely worth investigating how SEO friendly a word press template is before you pick one for your site.
March 7th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Great Blog Susan, I think business blogs are great and think its funny how we make decisions on the blog we want to start and the things we will write about in our blog, but at the end of the day, what we really know and are passionate about seems to come out. Blogs are great though, I earn a little money with a couple blogs I have, not much but five or six hundred bucks a month helps out and I enjoy it.
March 13th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Wordpress goes way beyond a blog and the sure you mentioned demonstrates that. It is now a CMS that is so user friendly, any micro startup should choose it. It is a no-brainer decision.
Great work!
April 30th, 2009 at 4:58 am
The very first time I gave Wordpress a try, I got a massive headache – I just couldn’t get my head around it. That was a long time ago, though. I have tried many blog platforms but Serendipity was what I felt comfortable with out of the others, including Wordpress. I haven’t attempted to use any other ever since.