Using WordPress to Save Money for Your Business

With all the talk of cutting back and going green – one would think media and advertisement would be out the window. While printed materials and high intensity ad campaigns might be slowing, more businesses are turning to the web – especially blogs – as a vehicle for their messages.  What you may NOT know is how powerful a tool blogging software has become – it’s not just for blogs anymore!

I work in WordPress, and I can‘t say enough about how great it is. Below are tips and ideas that use WordPress, as well as reasons you should have a copy of this powerful platform.

1. Increase Visibility for Little to No Cost! WordPress, for some reason, is more easily searched by search engine spiders than your standard sites… with less effort!  For some reason, I’ve found blogs posted on the WordPress.com site returned slightly better search engine visibility.
2. Brilliant Templates for Newbies and Non-Designers (I spend much of my time at smashingmagazine.com – search “WordPress templates”), while being extreme flexibility for expert programmers and designers.  This flexibility makes it available to users everywhere, no matter what their expertise!
3. Fast, Cheap and Easy! There are two ways you can set up a WordPress account.
   1. If you create an account at WordPress.com, you can set up a blog on the WordPress domain.  With this option, you can choose plugins and templates to ‘customize’ your site – but only ones that are hosted on the .com site.  Don’t worry – there are PLENTY!  This takes less than an hour to set up.  If you are savvier, you can experiment with custom images and CSS editing. – and all this is FREE!
   2. If you would like to host your own WordPress account, either on a new site or your existing domain, you will need to download the latest version of WordPress, unzip it, and uploaded it to your site.  Most hosting providers now have a “blog install” option on their site which will do this for you.  Software is FREE – install is usually FREE.  All you need is a URL and a hosting package.
4. Ability to Change Your Look. WordPress allows you to store themes, which can be used and changed in seconds.  WordPress pages are styled using CSS, which is a lightweight and simple method of style web languages.  Imagine the possibilities!  You could have a new look every season, without having to touch the actual content of your site!
5. WordPress as a Website – No, Really!  WordPress users have come such a long way; you no longer have to sacrifice look or functionality in your site.  You can almost match a site that took months to build with a WordPress site that was created in as little as one day.  The  WordPress community offers a wealth of plugins, with abilities to add features only the most robust websites used a few years before.  You want bells and whistles?  You got it!  And, like styling, they can be installed and removed in seconds.  And most are FREE!

The Bottom Line: By using WordPress to build and manage a website, the overall cost is WAY LESS than a custom site, with MORE BELLS AND WHISTLES and GREATER USABILITY in the back end, giving the domain owner more control than ever before – for much less money.

Sarah Chamberlain is a graphic and web designer.  Currently she works with 360jmg, a branding firm in Washington, DC, at which she recently started a Green Design Practice Group.  Catch her Green Design Blog on Tuesdays. Find her on Twitter at @Factory43 or shoot her an email at sarahchamberlain@360jmg.com.

Tagged as: DIY, Sarah Chamberlain, wordpress