or Customized WordPress Websites are the Professional Choice

As a website designer and online marketing consultant for small business, I find that many of my clients hire me because they are extremely disappointed with the search engine rankings and number of visitors to their websites. The majority of these websites were built by amateur friends or by the owner on do it yourself (DIY)  template sites. The site might look good but my clients eventually realize after a few months or even a few years that they need professional help to improve their local search optimization and to create social media ready websites.

Why Do It Yourself Websites Fail Small Businesses:

1. Keywords and SEO:

2. Social Media Shared Content:

3. Blogging:

4. Newsletters:

Getting your opt-in box up for your newsletter so that you can collect the all important leads to nurture should be a simple task. Does the DIY site have any tutorials to help you with this and is all this technical babble “Greek” to you? It can be accomplished with access to the right script but everything takes time and knowledge to do effectively.

5. Email and Social Media Marketing Promotions:

Do It Right the First Time and Rely on an Affordable Professional:

Rather than relying on the basic WordPress templates that are available, most small businesses go with a customized site that incorporates their own logo in the banner. This is the type of website I create for my clients. WordPress also enables you as the owner to edit your pages and add blog posts from any computer at anytime, anywhere!

 

I invite you to take a look at this site, FiveStarSiteMakers.com and its sister site,SocialNetBlogger.com to see how the SocialNetBlogger/FiveStar team uses social media and WordPress to get great online results! We can take you on the road to getting fantabulous results for your small business site too! For a FREE website or social media evaluation contact us at karen@fivestarsitemakers.com.

 

 

 

Karen Teeters is a fulltime online marketer, blogger, website designer and developer. She is an avid fan of the power of WordPress websites!. For more tips on online and social media marketing, follow her blog, SocialNetBlogger.com and visit our website creation website at FiveStarSiteMakers.com. You may republish this article in full. Just make sure you list this paragraph and provide a link.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by Karen A. Teeters

When you use social media in tandem with your website presence you need to think of its use like a two way street of communication. When people visit your site, you want to engage them enough with your content and offers so that they sign up for your newsletter, like your business Facebook page, link with your engaging tip oriented Twitter account and also follow your LinkedIn account if your business is professional or business to business. When I have been lucky enough to find a website I really like, yes I will do all four actions!

_______________________________________________________________________________

I sign up for the newsletter,  follow them on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn. And I can do this in a matter of seconds because all the Icon link buttons and newsletter op-tin invites are sitting together in the upper right hand sidebar which is the hottest real estate you've got on your site!

_____________________________________________________________

So that's one side of the street or communication when it comes to social media and your website. The other side has to do with your delicious, inviting content that is so on point and leading edge that your readers want to share it. So you  need your Like Me and Tweet Me buttons for your Facebook and Twitter readers that want to share your blog article content with their own faithful followers.

And the social media marketing circle or  word of mouth  miracle goes into action. Isn't it grand? And for your sophisticated followers that appreciate LinkedIn,  and other link to sites or email programs, you need to make sure you have your WordPress share plugin such as Sexy Bookmarks installed  and showing on your pages and post pages.

What's that you say? Sexy Bookmarks is one of the great plug ins you can install for free when your social media integrated website is installed on the WordPress.org platform. And all those other graphic link buttons and opt in forms I mentioned above? All easy to get on your website with user friendly WordPress.

Two years ago when I decided to create a blog for my husband's online business, I did my research and decided on a domain hosted WordPress blog or website.  I bought a domain name, installed it on WordPress and went to work creating pages. What was so amazing to me is that I did not need to know HTML or code and instead of getting just a great blog for my husband to write articles, I got a fully functional  website!

And now I create customized WordPress websites for my small business clients. I teach them how to add their own content and photos, how to update and use social media to enhance their marketing efforts. It is a win win situation because it does not cost thousands of dollars and it is the same platform that large companies like Ford, Pepsi and the New York Times are  using!

Can't beat that and everyday  the folks at WordPress and  their Open Source freelancers are always offering new  plug ins and widgets to keep your website up to date with the latest trends in website use!

In recent posts I have shared a few online marketing tips that can make your small biz  website and online marketing efforts get the results you need. Making your site the inviting hub or home  with well written content, compelling calls to action and  easy navigation is essential. Including an opt in form for your newsletter so that you can capture new leads and nurture them until they are ready to buy is a given when online marketing today. 

And of course, researching the different social media  options like Facebook and Twitter  to see where your niche market hangs out is also a major key to success.

Lurking on these sites to see  how your friendly competition utilizes social media is also a smart business move to make before you get your feet wet. And then emphasizing  the writing of a blog to establish you as a leading authority in your field and to get loyal followers is another great tip. These are previous tips that you have read posted here. To bring all these strategies together, I highly recommend the use of a customized WordPress site to make it all work for your business in a professional manner and without going over your small business budget.

I invite you to take a look at this site to see how the FiveStar team uses social media and WordPress to get great online results! We can take you on the road to getting great online marketing results for your small business site too!

For more tips on online and social media marketing, follow this blog and visit Karen Teeters' website at FiveStarSiteMakers.com. You may republish this article in full. Just make sure you list this paragraph and provide a link.

by Karen A. Teeters

A few days ago I got a call from a relatively new business owner  who was in the same social media conundrum I was in a few years ago.

Client Referral   One of my website clients had referred her to me.  I had coached my client with training on social media pointers for newbies and she realized I was the best candidate to do the same for her business  friend. And so I have a training appointment with my now new client to show her how she can use social media marketing to drive business the right way. We will use the free internet Skype  program so that she can see my screen as we talk over the internet.

And I will start with three easy tips. In my last blog, I talked about the importance of first having an excellent website because that is  the hub of all your  social media efforts.If you do not have a nice home to invite all you social media  friends to, then you have wasted your time.

But once you have a customer friendly, professional looking website in place, then what do do? My new client explained to me that she had started her Facebook page and she filled in the profile for her LinkedIn account and she had posted a few things but she still was not sure what her goal was or what she should do next. She even bought a few books on the subject but was still confused. I explained to her that she was on the right track by contacting me because I was in her same situation myself when I first started. I got myself on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and had read several best selling books.

Expert Social Media Training    The best thing I did was attend a live workshop by a local expert. With a power-point presentation, I could actually see what other successful businesses were doing with social networking

I could read a well written micro-blog and see how everything interacts. Write a new blog entry-Share it on Facebook-Distribute it with a newsletter-Tweet it on Twitter and Microblog it on LinkedIn.  Use software to make it quick and easy.  It started to make sense. And now I offer this type of one to one training  with the help of Skype so that my client can see the same screen I am working on.  Another key piece is to  start following similar businesses who are using Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and study their actions.

Three Tips   So in three short steps, here is my advice for the "Small Business Social Media Newbie":

1. Hire an experienced social media networker who can show you the ropes so you can do it right the first time.

2. Start up your accounts with Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin and lurk in the background for a while to see what the experienced networkers in your business are doing. Are they posting just business specials or are they interspersing their posts with bits of personal details and helpful observations? 70%  helpful insights and 30% business offers is the norm.

3. Now after you have your feet wet and have a basic understanding of how things work, buy your social media books and study them. You will now have a greater understanding of the jargon and techniques discussed. And you can develop a social media plan that will work for your business or your client's. Start getting your feet wet and microblog a little everyday on the sites that are a match for your business or where your ideal client participates.

Expert Authors to Follow and Read   To further your education, I recommend books and blogs  by social media experts such as Chris Brogan, Mari Smith and Gary Vaynerchuk. Darren Rowse is also great for blogging advice. The online Mashable blog is one of the all time great social media resources as well. After a while, you'll be networking with the best, at least until Facebook or Twitter makes a major change. And you can follow my blog right here for more tips for the social media newbie. Happy networking.

Fantastic Customization of your WordPress Website by FiveStarSitemakers.com is just one of the many reasons to sign on with WordPress for your small biz website! Read on…

(Read Part One)

A Drum Roll Please!

For your serious consideration here are Ten Plus reasons you will choose WordPress as your next website platform:

WordPress as a  Free Content Management System: This  allows you to  to update and maintain your web pages and blog or article posts by logging in to the WordPress administration panel. And if you use software such as  Windows Live Writer (or MarsEdit for MAC)  to create your content, the insertion into the  WordPress  dashboard or panel is even quicker!

The WordPress platform  as we mentioned is quickly becoming one of the fastest growing and most up to date state of the art website software available. It is easy to install, customize, manage and maintain. And it is free so that even when you pay for a customized, professional version, it is so very affordable-you will not break the bank of a small business budget!  Here is why you will  choose WordPress for your small business website:

Easy Installation: Today, the reliable Web Host providers make the WordPress.org platform available to their customers. Many times you will find if you sign up with a provider from a web developer's link that the web developer will install your WordPress Software on your chosen host provider for free. When you choose FiveStarSitemakers.com as your custom WordPress Designer and and Website developer, we will install your WordPress Program on your server free of charge. When your host server provides a  process called Fantastico, you can have your WordPress site up and running in minutes. We'll set that up and fine tune the process even more by setting up the best plug ins and widgets and tweaking the back end so that the WordPress website functionality is a  match for your  business needs!

Design Flexibility: WordPress was originally introduced  fro designing and building blogs but in the last few years  creative Website developers have fallen in love with the flexibility of this always improving platform and have adapted it to be one of the fastest growing and most popular regular website development software available!. You can create unlimited pages and the content is not connected to the design so you can update and change the design and look easily and for no or little cost whenever you want!

Fantastic Customization: You will find a lot of sites touting the beauty of being able to choose from all the free WordPress templates or themes out there. But truth be told there are only a few really well written and reliable free templates out there. And when you do your due diligence and research and find the few that you can trust, the designs may not be exactly what you want and you may not be able to change the colors or the number of columns or sidebars to really work for your website  plan.

That's where FiveStarSiteMakers.com comes in. We have mastered a design software system that provides the trusted back end of reliable, compliant stability and Search Engine functionality that the highest ranked WordPress themes garner and we offer you the flexibility of  having a theme designed just the way you want it. We can also change it and tweak  it even after we install it on your domain or URL. We always work with you to satisfy your needs. And since the WordPress theme is not tied to the WordPress content, we can easily and quickly come in and update and change your theme whenever you have the need. No expensive website remodel fees involved to stay fresh and up to date with your design!

Easy Maintenance: Adding, editing, deleting blog posts or articles, pages, photos, YouTube videos etc. can all be accomplished without learning HTML!  If you can use a text editor to create a word document, you can  master WordPress content creation and you can do it anywhere there is an internet connection, anytime! Pages and posts or articles are stored in a database which enables you create as many pages as you need and you manage them with an easy to use administration panel!

Search Engine Friendly: WordPress  empowers the search engines to find your posts and articles with powerful search plug-ins like All In One SEO that enable you  to create optimized keyword rich  titles and description tags for your content. When you write a new post, WordPress will alert the search engines of your new content and of course search engines thrive on fresh content. You will find your posts will often appear very quickly in the search engine results after you publish.

Schedule Posts: With the convenience of the WordPress dashboard, you will be able to write several posts or articles in advance  and then schedule them  to be automatically published on the days you request.  Talk about being empowered with time management!

RSS Feeds: Your readers can subscribe and get all your updates as soon as you post them with the RSS reader program. They can subscribe with a  newsreader like GoogleReader or they can get a more conventional email update. They just click on the correct icon in your sidebar which FiveStarSiteMakers.com helps you set up!

Interactivity: The great thing about WordPress is that it is part of the new Web 2.0 interactive website tools! Your  visitors can interact with you and your business. They can provide an opinion or offer new insights on what you have just posted or published. The search engines love this kind of fresh and helpful content. And you have other interactive options as well with the WordPress platform. People subscribe to your RSS feeds. they sign up for your newsletter or free e book that you may offer as an incentive.  You can also encourage Social Media dialogue  by offering your Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or other account link buttons right on your site!!

Large Supportive Community: I have listed on my Sidebar popular WordPress.org links to help you with any kind of WordPress questions!  The WordPress.org forums offer great advice on  new plug-ins, new versions and more and you always have the option to email or call FiveStarSitemakers.com when you have a question for support of  your account with us!

Multiple Plug-ins: WordPress is world famous for the fantastic  and always new and improved plug-ins that are created to  maximize the functionality of your WordPress website.  You name what you want or need! There are plug-ins for search engine optimization, contact forms, site maps, social media interaction and more.

Multiple Users: Do you have an assistant or even a virtual assistant or partner  that adds to your website? With WordPress you can create different users with different passwords to  log in  to edit or  be a contributing writer, whatever you need. Content can be added at any time from any location as long as there is an internet connection.

Generate Traffic to your site several ways: Search engine friendly pages optimize   keyword search results. RSS feeds encourage sign ups. You can submit your articles to article sites and blog directories. Links in your articles and listed on your sidebar add findability and of course the new content that you are continually adding keeps those search engines interested in listing your site regularly in the daily rankings.

Customizing your WordPress Site and Training on its Ease of Use: Once FiveStarSitemakers.com establishes all your needs for your customized WordPress site and it is up – We can easily teach you step by step in just a few short hours – how to use your new WordPress Website- how to use the dashboard – add content – add pages – add photos – add plug-ins, everything you need to know.

All this with a FREE Skype computer call: An inexpensive Skype ready headset and Skype's new screen shot feature gets you ready. We can now both be looking at the same computer screen shot as FiveStar explains how you can use your own WordPress dashboard to do whatever you need to do.

At FiveStarSiteMakers.com. we teach you what you need to know to manage and edit and whenever you have questions – We are just an email or toll free phone call away. Its easy – you will be your own expert very quickly!!

Call or email us today for a  FREE CONSULTATION.

Part One

Free Spirit Enterprises LLC, our parent company has been creating websites for over 11 years. A few years ago as the  marketing manager of these websites, one of my favorite free time research projects was researching the world wide web and book stores  for the latest and greatest techniques to drive more business.

And boy did I find a ton of unbelievable out of the box get rich quick schemes. But I went with my gut and ignored all those. After more than a few years in business you get to know that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is – too good to be true! Maybe you've done the same thing. A lot of hype out there!

What kept on floating to the top were words like “fresh content appeals to the search engines” or “blogs help create higher search engine rankings” or “content is king”. So all this piqued my interest and I read more, bought a few books, got a mentor and started developing a plan. I am not a techie at all but I did figure out how to start a blog and drive more business to our Corvette prints (www.illustratedcorvetteseries.com) websites.

I used something new to me called a self hosted WordPress website that is actually a website platform that also supports a blog.  All the credible experts advised that a real business would not have a free blog service on some other company's domain but would do better to have an actual business domain or URL that was hosted on a secure host server for just a few dollars a month.

So I bought my domain and read up on how to set up this WordPress site on our existing host server. I couldn't quite figure it out – just too many techie steps that were then over my head so I hired an expert to set it up for me for less than 35.00. Then my husband learned the steps for my next website and I eventually signed on with a host server that has the Fantastico application that almost anybody can set up on a host server's c-panel. I also now offer a set up service myself to make it even easier for my own clients.

So with professional training and special software design programs  in place I was up and running and setting up new websites for myself and new clients ( I took a graphic design classes at a local college as well!).  If I can learn WordPress, fellow small business owner, then believe me, you can learn WordPress to get professional website results.You too can be updating your own website, adding blog posts or articles, be tweeting and talking about your latest blog/article on Facebook and adding your professional expertise on LinkedIn. You will now have the credibility of your own interactive web 2.0 WordPress website as your social networking hub.

It is totally addictive and easier than you think such that you may end up creating many more websites to create even more business for your products and services. Highly targeted, niche websites are what work best! With the help of books, plenty of written tutorials, forums, YouTube videos, and  excellent advice from professional WordPress partners, I have created many WordPress websites. And I have paid it forward  and have taught other small businesses the ins and outs of this very inexpensive but extremely professional website platform.

I can have you up and running in a few hours or a few days depending on your needs. And did I mention that I can customize your WordPress website to match your logo and brand colors? No reason to pick a free theme that looks like everybody else's site when for a very affordable cost, you can have a customized, professional look!

Here is my first WordPress website in its current incarnation with the customized theme I created for it:

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I am obviously not the only fan! Large Corporations and Small Businesses are now using WordPress. Established companies such as Pepsi, Fisher Price, Best Buy and Ford are all choosing WordPress. Why? Read Part Two.

Call or email us today for a  FREE CONSULTATION.