By Owner
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. These are a few of the more popular Social Networking sites that you have probably already heard of and may already be using. But Social Networking platforms such as these are not just for playing online social games, taking quizzes, sending virtual gifts or reconnecting with friends and family. In fact Social Networking is another way to advertise yourself and your business for free or at a very low cost.
Those sites have become great resources for finding new customers. But to get these networks (especially Twitter) to work to your advantage, networking is crucial. You should search for companies with similar interests and support them by “following” them or “liking” them. The idea is that those companies will return the favor — ultimately leading traffic to both sites, and helping each company grow.
By Owner
Fast forward to today, and now we have WordPress – an amazingly powerful content management system that is FREE. And it has a lot of power under the hood for a small or medium business looking for an easy way to manage their web site.
WordPress was designed as a platform for blogging, but you don’t have to use it as a blogging tool. With a few tweaks it can be used to run your website, with or without a “blog.” The fact that WordPress was designed as a blogging platform gives it some compelling advantages.
It is optimized for easily publishing and changing content. And getting good search engine rankings requires fresh, unique content. You need a system that does not get in your way when you want to update your website with a new article or newsletter.
So why is WordPress a good choice?
Top 3 Reasons to Use WordPress for Your Small Business Website
- SEO – WordPress provides good search engine optimization (SEO) right out of the box. There are a few tweaks you need to make, but there are many seo benefits that WordPress provides for free.
- Content – it is easy to update content on your website without knowing HTML. Do you hate the idea of having to learn to use a complex HTML editor tool like Dreamweaver? Do you have to “ask” your webmaster every time you want to make a small change to your website? Well no longer – once WordPress is set up for you, you can easily create new pages or edit existing pages using a simple rich text editor.
- Extensions – There is a thriving ecosystem of developers creating themes and plug-ins. Now you have the ability to extend your website with polls, contact forms, ratings or hundreds of other cool features.
By Owner
Most non-technical people have never heard of Joomla! So why should you consider using it for your new website and how will it help you? Joomla is an excellent CMS (content management system). CMS allows information on your website to be easily added, edited or removed via a management console. You simply login, change whatever you want and log out. Also, it’s open-source, that means that there are no licensing fees keeping the cost of your new website down. How can it be any good if it’s free? I thought that too when I first heard about it. After trying it out for a test, I’m sold, it’s a well designed, complete system, with a huge following of developers contributing to improve functionality and security features.
What can I do with my new Joomla! website? Basically almost anything you want. Joomla! comes with the ability to add news including images, files and text and make it look the way you want it to. Also you can change menus on the fly, take user polls, site search, use the web link manager, syndicate your news via RSS (a great way to get the word out), add advertising using the banner manager and more. In addition to the standard features, there are thousands of Joomla extensions that will allow you to sell on the Internet, have a photo gallery and provide an event calendar just to name a few. Most of the extensions are free or by donation. Some of the best are offered for a very modest cost.
I don’t need all of this! You may not now, but how about next month or next year? By using Joomla on your website, it opens the doors to new information and new functionality in the future. Joomla can be a simple brochure website or a complex user community.
