I’ve talked a lot about WordPress but I haven’t explained why it’s better than all the typical offerings pitched to small companies (products from Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, YellowPages.com, CitySearch, and others). Today I’ll do that in just 200 words. To accomplish my goal I’ll just hit the highlights and leave further explanation for later posts.
It’s the tool the Pros use and there is good reason for that
Offers you tremendousSEO out-of-the-box – this means FREE search engine marketing
Easy to write and publish new content with no need for technical knowledge
It can be a web site, a blog or both
People like me all over the world are showing you how to use it – for free
For less than $100 a year you can get an equivalent web site and blog for what you’d pay a designer or programmer $2-$5K for
Access to WordPress community of contributors numbering over 10,000 to assist with design, programming, training or consulting (size of community drives competitive pricing)
Geek stuff under the hood helping you without you needing to know Geek
In our session today, Episode 10 (run time 9:54) we cover how to get your small business web site and blog hosted and activated with our recommended web host MidPhase using a method called auto-install (also called a one-click install). In our next video how-to session we’ll cover how to select a FREE or Pro WordPress design for less than $100.
By clicking on my link to MidPhase and then entering my discount code “GOTAPEX-ROX-01″ (no quotes) during the order process you’ll get three months of free hosting plus your domain name FREE for life. Make sure your MidPhase order confirmation page reflects the discount. The package should come out to less than $72 in total hosting costs for the year (12 months) at which time you’ll renew for the next year. Disclaimer: I receive a small commission if you sign up with MidPhase that helps me defray the cost of delivering Local Na8ion. Even if I wasn’t paid this fee we’d still recommend MidPhase because we’ve used them and they’ve lived up to their marketing claims.
I also mention in my video today that you should pick up a copy of WordPress For Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson. It’s the perfect desk reference and self-paced study guide to help you learn WordPress. Grab a copy of WordPress For Dummies today.
Let’s recap why we recommend WordPress for small businesses in the first place.
“It’s FREE, easy to use and update, has more built-in Local SEO Goodness than any comparable product, and you can use it to power your regular web site, not just a blog.”
and
“Did we mention that WordPress has an active community of over 10,000 contributors? They’re busy year-round making new theme designs that you can use on your site (most are free to use) along with adding specialty features and functionality (called plug-ins in WordPress) that do everything from power a job board, help you run a newspaper, or make the SEO goodness in WordPress even better.”
I hope you enjoy today’s video and as always, let me know your questions and comments.
Julian Seery Gude
editor Local Na8ion Where you are is where it’s at
I am a happy midPhase affiliate and use and recommend their service. The majority of products and services I recommend do not pay me. But on the rare occasion where I’m both very satisfied with a product/service AND they have an affiliate program I will happily use it! If you’re interested in an alternative to midphase that is faster (also more expensive) try MediaLayer’s AppLayer hosting -it’s awesome!
I know you are probably ready for a new topic other than social media for small business but I want to give you an important quick heads-up and link (hat tip to Ramon Ray over at smallBiztechnology.com for linking to this). I thought of just adding this as an addendum to my last video Podcast on social media but it’s too important to be that easily missed. What’s special about this article is its broad perspective. It gives you a picture of social media and blogs over the last two years, making it a worthy primer on the topic.
One of the points I made in my series is that aspects of social media (like blogs) have been over hyped. That’s resulted in people tuning them out – especially companies that look to more proven and mainstream ways to advertise and market their business.
Here’s an excerpt
“Monday 9:30 a.m. It’s time for a frank talk. And no, it can’t wait. We know, we know: Most of you are sick to death of blogs. Don’t even want to hear about these millions of online journals that link together into a vast network. And yes, there’s plenty out there not to like. Self-obsession, politics of hate, and the same hunger for fame that has people lining up to trade punches on The Jerry Springer Show. Name just about anything that’s sick in our society today, and it’s on parade in the blogs. On lots of them, even the writing stinks.
Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they’re simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they’re going to shake up just about every business—including yours.”
. 
