Web Design & Internet Marketing: a Practical Business Approach

 

 Gain publishing control on your website [4:48m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (91)

Here’s the real problem. There is a lot to talk about in your business. You have new products, new services, you might have specials, seasonal promotions, holiday promotions, customer stories, case studies. Maybe you run a restaurant and you have menu items, or you host musical events and you want to get PR out the door. There are a lot of things happening in your business, and guess what, you should be getting it out on your website.

Now, what’s the problem here is most of us are locked out of our own websites. What I mean is that we have to go through our webmaster in order to get something changed on the website. And it’s just too much work, too much money, to get everything that’s going on in your business out the door on your website.

OK, what I just said is completely wrong today. Today the technology is available for you to be able to post information yourself easily; even easier than Microsoft Word is to use. You can log in today, with a user name and password right on your website, add the information you want to add, click “publish”, and bam, publish the information right on your website. And if you’re really clever you hook it up so that when you click “publish” it spits out to your email list as well as putting it on your website.

So, the software today has changed. The game is changing. In the past software such as Dreamweaver, FrontPage, NetObjects, and many others were used by webmasters, still are used by web masters, and they’re installed on the webmaster’s computer. That’s where all the work has to live.

There is also software that you can buy that you can run on your own machine that will hook up, through some work, with a software that either lives on the webmaster’s machine or through the server itself. But it’s fairly complex, mostly problematic in my experience. I’ve used a bunch of these different software packages and they just don’t work great.

The best software, here are the three biggies. I’m going to tell you which ones are the ones to look at. Drupal is a nice piece of software. It’s content management, it lets you make edits right online. Joomla!, same thing. Joomla! Makes edits right online. And you can even use WordPress to make edits online, logging in, no software required.

Now, here’s the downside. If you have a site that you recently built where you’re not quite ready to rebuild your website, it’s going to cost money for you to convert your current website into one of these websites that allow you to edit.

If you were thinking about rebuilding your site, or if you’re looking at a brand new website, then what I would do is I would talk to your webmaster about using one of these three software programs to build your website.

Now, there’s an additional benefit to publishing your information, things that are happening in your company, online. The benefit is that Google loves this stuff. If you start talking about the promotions you’re having and the press and the case studies that you’re doing, Google picks up on this and they’ll come back to your website more often, and more visitors will find your website. And that increases the chance that they’re going to connect with you.

So, here’s what to do.

Think about the types of things that change in your business, things that you want to talk about, products, services, specials. Do you promote things on the holidays? Do you have inventory? Do you have performers coming onsite? Are there events that you want to publish on your website and let the world know?

Make a list of the things in your business that you’d like to talk about. And that list should be online. It should be available and it should be changing over time. And you should have the ability to easily make those changes.

And then talk to your webmaster about getting your website converted into this new software that is making an enormous difference in the performance of websites.

Once you start adding information to your website you’re going to learn the power of your website, and how effective it can be for your business.

Oh and let me know if you have had any experience with Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, or any other content management software!