You’d rather rely on few, have less and pay more.

2. You don’t need easy to redesign site management software that advances with the web.

You like rebuilding your site from scratch every few years and spending more to add new features.

3. You don’t appreciate that marketing & advertising is more and more about the networking of your content everywhere possible.

You’d rather place a brochure site on the web, watch it loose any current status fast and either pay or hope to get traffic and prospects to it.

4. You don’t appreciate direct [RSS or Email] subscription and simple solutions that allow your target market to remain aware of your current content.

You’d rather use less user friendly, more invasive and more costly methods to remain on your target market’s radar screen.

5. You don’t appreciate simple cost free content creation, the appeal of new content to search engines and being current for a discerning marketplace.

You’d accept having a static presence, less search engine favor and would rather pay to have new content coded or existing content re- coded.

This post pokes some fun, but it is possible you could improve your web presence dramatically with the proper use of WordPress. So, maybe you do need it… and just don’t know it yet.

Does your site seamlessly leverage content everywhere on the web possible? Can you say it:

• maximizes search engine indexing
• promotes direct RSS & email subscription
• networks your content outward to other sites & social networks
• promotes more back linking and bookmarking
• encourages conversation & interactivity?

Does it meticulously organize content with proper URL structure, categorization, archiving and tags?

• The Value of Managing Your Brand With a Business Blog
• Wordpress For Company Websites? Why Not, Indeed!
• Top 10 Reasons WordPress is Important For Your Business!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a stellar real estate technology event in Denver – REBarCamp (you can share the day’s tweet love here #REBCDEN).  Real estate tech geeks from Colorado (and some from further away!) got together to share growing industry trends and ideas.

By now most of you know that aside from content creation and social media services, Kinetic Knowledge builds managed Wordpress platforms for our clients.  I was pleasantly surprised to hear the overall tone of the day – drop what you’re doing and pay attention to Wordpress!

Presentations carried strong messages such as, “If your site is not Wordpress or Drupal already, junk it now or pay someone to migrate it for you.” Rich Morrow

Wow!  As I smiled internally, I also had an “aha” moment.  When we hear Wordpress we immediately think blogging.  And, yes Wordpress is the best blogging platform around IMHO.  However, how many of us hear Wordpress and think high performing, fantastic looking, easily managed, REAL TIME – websites?  Yes, Yes, Yes – brilliant!  The bottom line is that Wordpress is built on an amazing set of bricks – the architecture is not only suitable for stellar blogs but also for highly effective custom website platforms that allow you to manage the flow of your own static messaging.

Reflect back on all the money you’ve ever spent creating websites… astounding right?  I personally can recall working for a real estate company who spent $32,000 to have the best darn database driven website around.  And at the time, they had to in order to compete.  Now think forward to the opportunity staring you down.  Wordpress provides the business tools you need to get better performance while reducing your overall online marketing costs. That’s right, I said it.  In the longrun (heck – in the shortrun), using an adaptable platform like Wordpress will save you money – via ease of content management, via search engine optimization, via saved human resources, via technical adaptability.  It’s a no brainer, truly.  And yes, clearly I’m biased but I’m also trying to provide valuable information to help you out!

Let’s overview just some of the things Wordress makes easy:

• Naturally attract search engines
• Blog to further attract search engines
• Attack niche markets via the type of content you release
• Create and manage your own static webpages
• Modify your own site navigation
• Create and manage your own lead generation forms (somewhat techie but doable)
• Add third party functionalities via widget spaces (maybe too techie for some, but nonetheless doable)
• Change up the look and feel of your sites (again, techie but doable for some)
• Plug-in e-commerce portals
• Add tools to grow your reader subscriptions for permission based marketing efforts
• Set up your site to push your message to social networks
• Manage product databases

And the list could go on and on…  Bottom line: this is a very viable platform not only for bloggers but for savvy business folks looking to nail on online web presence.

One thing I’ll leave you with – you often hear Wordpress and think “do it yourself”.  Companies such as Kinetic Knowledge provide managed Wordpress web, blogging and social media services for a fraction of the cost of marketing and website firms.  Consider the value of your time – if things like plug-ins, code, php, widgets, themes, FTP, server configurations, software upgrades, etc. sound foreign to you – they are.  While Wordpress is a very agile open source system that technically CAN be installed by any individual, it’s always prudent to hire to your weakness and guard your valuable time for what you do best.  Use us to tap into this opportunity – we are here to help!

Thanks to @daveintucson for the spark and a great “aha” moment – a thought provoking presentation yesterday!

Looking for help with a business website or blog?  Kinetic Knowledge provides managed Wordpress, content creation and social media services.  Contact us today for more information about effectively marketing your business online.

Top 10 Reasons WordPress is Important For Your Business!
 
1. WordPress is Extensible!

Unlike many software platforms, WordPress is designed with consideration for future growth. When managed properly, it’s constantly advancing and it’s never obsolete! It’s a full blown content management software platform that can be designed or adjusted to do just about anything [i.e. design, database, lead capture, etc.] Think of the great websites you’ve seen, but with all of the additional advantages listed below.

2. WordPress is Open Source!

Arguably the most successful open source software platform ever unleashed on the programming and design community, WordPress has such incredible worldwide support that new plugin solutions, advances and also problem fixes are endless! Because the supporting programming community is so vast, it collectively solves problems & challenges rapidly.

3. WordPress is Setup for the Ease of Real-Time Content Publishing!

If you want to be relevant on the web, you must publish! WordPress enables the simple, unlimited and cost free creation of content. While it’s a full blown content management software platform, nothing supports the need to be content driven better than WordPress. Plus, your content remains organized [e.g. categorized, tagged and archived] in your branded environment.
 
4. WordPress is Equipped for Outbound Syndication to the Sites and Social Networks of Your Choice!

Short on time, big on broad web visibility? Set your blog up properly and your content can network your brand everywhere! Syndicating Formats enable automated outward bound syndication of your content to your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social network accounts.
 
5. WordPress is Search Engine Friendly!

People that search have intent: when it relates to what you sell, you better try and be there. Out of the box WordPress is pretty optimized website software because of how it supports the crawling and indexing of every page. It’s spidered easily due to it’s permalink, category & tag structure. It also has well linked pages and clean markup. Versus typical HTML sites, which require time & effort to change and to optimize new content, WordPress is easily updated and also manipulated for search. Managed correctly, WordPress is off the charts search engine optimization!

6. WordPress is Tuned to Entice Unlimited Subscription!

Do you want links? Bookmarks? Do want to be on the radar screen of “ready to buy” buyers? To make it happen, you need to have people repeatedly reading your blog. How do you get folks to visit more regularly? Whether via RSS or email, you must get them to subscribe and WordPress makes it happen! 

7. WordPress is Disintermediated Advertising!

Advertising used to be limited in time and space. Your choices were few, the media companies wealthy enough to create the content that could attract an audience for your advertising message. Once there, they limited your engagement time and presentation space. Now, with WordPress, that’s been disintermediated: there are no longer limits to content  creation, distribution and also visibility [shelf life] of your valuable information. Advertise current events, know how and education direct to the market you target and who want it… direct!

8. WordPress is Primed to Leverage The Long Tail!

The idea behind Long Tail Theory as it relates to your business is to be visible for as many word & phrase variations of your core subject as possible. While a business may generate less search discovery per variation than it will for the most sought after target key words & phrases, the collective impact for all those variations can be much greater. What’s more, short tail word & phrase visibility may simply be cost-prohibitive. WordPress supports the cost-effective approach to being visible for all those variations…. in the search engines and social networks!

9. WordPress is Configured to Promote Interactive Commenting!

Comments can be nice, maybe because people pay you compliments, or useful when they bring a mistake to your attention. Above all, comments foster engagement! While most consumers won’t comment on your WordPress site and you don’t need comments to sell your products and services, engagement can get people linking and bookmarking. It can also help you build more relationships.

10. WordPress is Proven At The Highest Level!

Sophisticated Companies like ‘The New York Times’ and ‘The Wall Street Journal’ use WordPress… need we say more?

What is Kinetic Knowledge?

If you consider yourself capable, managing WordPress can be a way to go; however, don’t ever let anyone suggest that doing it right is easy.  With constant WordPress software, plugin feature & custom work updating, browser sync’ing, security and then server optimization… things can get hairy real fast. If nothing else, beware that plugins get abandoned, configurations come undone and things will break.

Kinetic Knowledge is a leading WordPress Management services firm with experience- based build, brand design, search optimize, customer service and education management platforms in place. At Kinetic Knowledge we believe in adding tremendous value. Clients come first – we can’t succeed unless you do!

Related Posts:

WordPress: Site Speed Versus Feature Benefits

On Friday Google announced they were going to include a new signal in their search ranking algorithm – “site speed”. For the layperson, site speed is often refered to it as “load time” and it is a part of what affects a WordPress blog’s or, for that matter, any site’s competitive SEO. your site speed reflects how quickly a page responds to visitor requests from a web browser. Not to worry too much, Matt Cutts of Google discloses that “site speed” is only one of 200 signals used to compare you to the competition for organic search results and it’s not nearly as important as the relevance of your pages -see the below video. Google also adds, less than 1% of all search queries are even affected by the speed of sites… so again worry some, but not too much. 
 

 
While they’re saying site speed is a new signal, there are some general things you should know. First off, there are a scary number of random things that can affect how your WordPress blog loads in any one person’s browser, including their own computer settings. Second, pages have probably always had to load favorably in order to justify more spider crawling, more key phrase indexing and better SEO. Spiders don’t always crawl deep into your pages! And finally, it’s why a service like ours puts so much effort into things like WordPress updates, plugin evaluation, server setup and caching as a part of our standard monthly service. Here is a quick list of things that may affect a blogs’ “site speed” depending on your site’s setup and also on who’s visiting:
 
1. The version of the visitors’ browser – is it current or so old and obsolete that it’s having an effect on the speed they see?
2. Does site have too many plugins or widgets added – we certainly do our best to monitor this for clients, but folks want lots of plugins & widgets and a bad one or bad combination can have an effect.
3. Are there specific modifications to a site’s design or to a feature that all of a sudden slows site speed down?
4. Is the site making reference to too many outside resources, like for instance, various 3rd party or Social Media tools?
5. Is a theme or design choice creating too much drag – does it count on too many style sheets or is there a poor use of graphics?
6. Something that can be in your favor, but also deceiving in the long run is “how far along is the competition?” – are they even competing yet?
7. And then there’s security software. If tuned too agressively on a visitor’s PC, it can also undermine visitor experience.

Ultimately, we’re constantly looking for ways to balance features and speeding things up to provide a better visitor experience for all clients. No matter how you manage a WordPress blog nothing ever stands still: WordPress software, open source feature plugins, widgets, search algorithm signals, security solutions and web browsers are forever being updated and that affects everyone – not just you, but the competition too. We’d be the first to admit we’ve made some mistakes managing it all over the years, but that experience is a benefit in the long run. The focus of a service like ours is to fight the never ending battle so clients are always advancing cost effectively and in ways that support a competitive advantage!

Related Posts:

• Managing Your WordPress Blog Like It’s A Business Asset?
• Confused By Search Engine Optimization? Try This ‘Laypersons Guide To Understanding SEO’
• What does the Google Crawl mean to your business and how will your Business Blog help?

 I’ve seen a lot written lately by folks who have favorite WordPress plugins. We certainly have lots of them ourselves, but it concerned me some for people managing, or counting on others to manage, their WordPress business blogs. That concern was confirmed some this weekend at WordCamp Orlando when Jane Wells talked a little about abandoned WordPress plugins and when a programmer in the audience shared concern for the service responsibilities involved. So, I wanted to throw some caution out there: namely, there are lots of WordPress plugins… and some get abandoned!

For instance, did you know that the most popular WordPress plugin of all ‘All In One SEO Pack’ *was abandoned* by it’s creator in mid-June? Management has since been picked up by able programmers, but as a business [or even as someone speaking to business people] it’s important to understand what WordPress open source software is.

WordPress is managed by a core development team and it’s supported by an international ‘open source community’ of independent programmers & designers. The core development team manages software updates, while the ‘open source community’ mostly builds template themes [designs] and plugin features. In theory, it’s their responsibility to keep up to date with WordPress updates… and they don’t always do it. This is understandable as no one can work for free indefinitely and the definition of free does not include accountable. What it means is, unmanaged or abandoned plugins can undermine your blog so manage updates for it and all the plugins you’ve added carefully.

If you’re a business, your blog is ultimately a core asset that accumulates subscribers, feed connections, bookmarks, links, brand recognition and competitive search engine indexing. That’s all potential new business pipeline so you’ve really got to be careful.  

Kinetic Knowledge is a WordPress Management Service that, amongst many other things, offers ongoing technology management & advancement.

On a daily basis we’re contacted by various small to medium sized business people asking what it entails to manage a WordPress blog for their business. It makes sense they’d ask because, to a large degree, good business blogs add marketing strength where most websites can’t. Some are playing around with free blog solutions. Others work with website companies that throw in free blog services. Most are wondering whether or not a business blog service makes sense. What we have learned over the years is that it is consuming and, at times, difficult [grunt] work.

Regardless, in order to be successful you’ve really got to recognize your business blog platform, it’s accumulated subscribers, feed connections, links and search indexing as a serious business asset. An asset that can bring leads and new business at any time. FREE has no interest in these things, yet sooner or later all assets require time, resources and/ or money. Busy people may also need convenient educational blog resources and service, but let’s look at what the challenges might be when managing WordPress for business.

1. Customization & Design – Do you want a brand or will you settle for something anyone else can have? If a brand, you’re going to need to do some custom design work.
2. Hosting – Hosting is not simple! You either pay for it or you get a minimal service. Be sure you understand the customer service obligation, memory, storage, data backup timing and security or you are definitely asking for surprises.
3. Security – Servers get attacked. Sites get hacked. Your asset needs security.
4. WordPress Updates – Wordpress updates its software quite regularly and this process must be managed on your platform. If you have custom design, plugin features and any unique code modifications, which is very normal for serious business bloggers, than updates have to be managed carefully. Keeping everything in sync, including adequate load times, can get tricky.
5. Plugin Updates – Like Wordpress updates, plugin features must be updated. If there are code modifications, they have to be managed very carefully when updating. Again, keeping everything in sync, including adequate load times, can get really tricky.
6. Plugin Code Modifications – If you’ve created modified or customized plugins, you’ve got to be sure these are not going to undermine your WP upgrade. Shoddy code modification can easily topple everything.
7. Load Times – Load times appeal to both search spiders and humans. If load times get too slow, SEO suffers and humans get impatient defeating the whole purpose of being there! Any combination of plugins, single plugin or code modification can undermine load times, so management is key.
8. Page URLs – New page or post URLs should to be set to support SEO, unless you have other specific requirements. In either event, every new pages URL matters, so set them properly.
9. Avoiding Duplicate Pages – If not set up properly, your [home page] post, that post in its category and in its archive may look to search engine spiders like duplication. Duplication won’t necessarily kill you, but it can lessen the effectiveness of a search engine crawls. Do that, and you may just reduce crucial key word and phrase indexing.
10. Return on Investment – Do you understand what’s actually happening as a result of your business blogging? Are you generating traffic? Are visitors engaging with your business brand or just bouncing? Are you capturing leads? Adding good traffic analytics is an important step. Understanding what they mean and how to use them becomes crucial to getting a return.
11. Lead Capture – It’s one thing to get visitors there, but what are you doing to capture them? Giving anything away? And if so, what information are you gathering in exchange for that give?
12. Training & Support – How much time do you have to understand all of the above? Are you keeping up with new feature possibilities or modifying those you do have? If something isn’t right, where do you go for help?
13. And lot’s more we’ll add as we go…
     
    At $49 per month Kinetic Knowledge business blogging services make sense because you tend to the above, while adding convenient educational resources and highly accountable human service. 

RELATED POSTS:

• Understanding WordPress
• Can you afford a Free Business Blog?
• WordPress can be free, but ONLY if you’re OK with Advertising
• Is Open Source software an advantage versus Proprietary software?
• “Can I Manage My Own Free Business Blog?”

Kinetic Knowledge is a WordPress Management Service offering build, design, search optimization, ongoing technology management & advancement, hosting, storage, security, blog marketing education, blog content options and more.

We’re often asked how there can be a free version of WordPress without the support of advertising. The fact is, if WordPress is hosting your blog for free it has actually added advertising to cover that cost. And by the way, this shouldn’t be a surprise or a disappointment. Valuable software like WordPress shouldn’t be free. Particularly not if you have actual business requirements and certainly not when the folks at WordPress work so hard to make ‘publishing to the web’ so accessible for so many.

To clarify and according to WordPress itself, “To support the service we may occasionally show Google text ads on your blog…” Matt Mullenweg, Founding Developer, adds that the advertising has enabled his team to offer an ever- improving software without charging for upgrades; however, he also adds there are enterprises that would never want the advertising. This is important particularly because WordPress cannot filter competitive advertising and that is because the ad- software is contextual. [Contextual meaning, the ad system scans the blog for keywords and returns ads based upon the keyword text it finds.] So, for example, if your free blog is based upon Real Estate or Architecture or Travel, etc. it’s likely you’re pulling competitive advertising on to your blog.

Now, this doesn’t leave one without a choice. For the business that wishes to manage WordPress on its’ own, they now offer an advertising opt- out for a monthly cost of about $30. Obviously you have choices with WordPress and we’re certainly here to offer comprehensive & affordable management services, including branded design, feature plugin, software update management and extensive ongoing education. If it interests, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Related Posts:

• Understanding WordPress
• Is Open Source software an advantage versus Proprietary software?
• Can you afford a Free Business Blog?

Kinetic Knowledge is a WordPress Management Service offering build, design, search optimization, ongoing technology management & advancement, hosting, storage, security, blog marketing education, blog content options and more.

Business Blogs Defined

Blogs are websites; however, they differ in that they allow the layperson to publish *at will.* This is a really big deal for your business because search engines are attracted to active sites. They seek to continually identify, consume and organize [or index] the most timely content. Equally the big deal, blogs have eliminated the barriers to becoming a consistent source of advertorial trade media!

WordPress Business Blog Options

This post takes a general look at WordPress blog software and those that support it. To begin it’s best to know your options, which include:

1) Create a free blog, which would be hosted as a sub domain of WordPress [i.e. http:janedoe.wordpress.com].

2) Download WordPress onto a domain you own using paid host support.

3) Hire an independent programmer/ designer [at an hourly rate] to set WordPress up for you.

4) Outsource to a comprehensive Business Blogging Service offering the management of WordPress on an ongoing basis for a fixed price.

What follows will offer some context for how WordPress and its’ supporting Open Source Community work together.

Officially there are two versions of WordPress software [WP and WPMU], but there are also a variety of open source variants and forks out there. WordPress is managed by a core development team and it is supported by an international ‘open source community’ of independent programmers & designers. The core development team manages software updates, while the ‘open source community’ mostly builds template themes [designs] and plugin features.

Open Source Software Defined

Open Source software could be lightly summarized as using the power of many to develop, evolve and improve existing software. More specifically, software source code is made available by someone [possibly, via a copyright license] permitting collaborative use, change, improvement and modified redistribution. Many believe it’s the future of software development because of how [assuming the programming environment is active] it can enable rapid fixes, improvements and fine tuning. By no means should you throw your proprietary software in the trash- there are potential pitfalls here! For instance, the more people contributing to software code the sloppier it can become. Like anything, without good management things go wrong and you should know that no one pays the ‘open source community’ to participate. Hang tight and we’ll look at why they participate soon, but studies have shown versus proprietary software that open-source software has a higher, quicker flaw discovery turn around. And let’s face it, even Microsoft and Google have had their issues.

So, from the core development team you have WordPress software code. You also have periodic updates for that software code. From the ‘open source community’ you have template themes [designs] , feature plugins and also the random hack to meet a specific need or goal. The core team allows certain of the ‘open source community’ to see what is coming down the pike [update- wise]. The community is encouraged to offer input and to update their various template themes and plugin features; however, software updates are ultimately in the hands of the core WordPress development team. And by the way, WordPress software is the core team’s day job. They are – very important - paid!!; whereas, the ‘open source community’ may not be. Open Source are talented independent programmers & designers who build template themes and plugin features, partly for the love of WordPress and partly because their work may serve as recognition [if widely accepted] for unique programming and/ or design skill. Other words, it’s advertising and they do it to get work so they can get hired and paid.

Business Blogging Requirements

As a business, it’s important to understand this all: there is no formal [open source] template or feature plugin evaluation process. While it is NOT the rule and most certainly the exception, there can be sloppy, insecure or obsolete code coming out of the ‘open source community.’ To demonstrate, consider this recent business scenario: “I’m not familiar with what the protocol is for these matters but…many WP users have installed themes by XYZ. She has stopped updating her themes and her former website is down. I have tried contacting her w/o success. I was wondering whether protocol permits a theme developer adopting her themes and updating them (making them widget-ready for example) for the thousands of WP users who have wonderful themes like A, B & C. Many of us hope these themes won’t be abandoned.” The fact is, some programmers/ designers are just learning about WordPress or worse they may not keep up with core software updates. With core code, frequent updates, themes, plugins and the random hack there is a lot to keep up with. While the many themes & plugins seem novel and fun, depending on how you actually manage it all will determine how successful you can be. Let’s face it, it can be a miserably frustrating, if not damaging, experience when something breaks, doesn’t jibe or comes down… and it happens! Business people are often too busy to keep up with the development of software, not to mention an entire supporting community.

In the long run it can pay to have experienced WordPress Business Blogging help to outsource the management of WordPress for a fixed price. Based upon our experience with various Blog solutions, we’re convinced [if you have the right people managing it] WordPress is simply the most user and search engine friendly software out there. And by the way, serious companies like CNN and Dow Jones deploy WordPress… and they get good help.

Related Posts:

• WordPress can be free, but ONLY if you’re OK with Advertising
• Is Open Source software an advantage versus Proprietary software?
• Can you afford a Free Business Blog?

Kinetic Knowledge is a WordPress Management Service offering build, design, search optimization, ongoing technology management & advancement, hosting, storage, security, blog marketing education, blog content options and more.