WordPress is a community blogging site particularly relevant to the small business owner today. With a high web profile, WordPress also has capabilities that are unique to businesses and to the branding of a company across the social networking horizon.
Social networking was profiled in the past for personal friendships and connecting with high school classmates or college alumni. So the focus has been on the personal side with little or no benefits from a professional point of view. But the marketing landscape has changed in this millennium.
A blog is not solely a place to journal daily thoughts or to provide a place for Mom and Dad to go read about some event or challenge that was happening in a son or daughter’s life. Marketing and business are changing thanks to the internet, so we need to use these avenues for professional means as well.
WordPress provides a variety of key plug-ins to facilitate business networking and branding for the seasoned entrepreneur, corporate marketing CEO or beginning business owner.
A plug-in is a composition consisting of a set of software components and these components add specific capabilities to communicate with another application. The plug-ins give the ability to customize a certain functionality of a third-party application.
What are the basics that you should be sure to have?
- All in One SEO Pack
- W3 Total Cache
- WPTouch (iPhone Theme)
- Fast Secure Contact Form
One of the most popular of the WordPress plug-in is the “All in One SEO Pack Plug-in.” This plug-in automatically optimizes the key words in a blog for the search engines so that the blog has the best chance of visibility. It also gives you the chance to optimize your title, description ad tags.
This plug-in is vital, particularly to the new small business owner because he or she is just beginning the branding process. It’s a small step towards self optimization for your business.
Another great and simple plug-in is the “W3 Total Cache.” The purpose of this plug-in is to give the user a more nimble experience on the site. It also adds a browser, objects, pages, and a comprehensive database. The plug-in provides a 10x faster and more efficient content delivery overall. An additional benefit is the ability to minimize posts, pages, other feeds; also of inline, embedded or 3rd party JavaScript and 3rd party CSS.
The “WPtouch” iPhone Theme plug-in automatically transforms the WordPress blog into an iPhone application. With this plug-in, the administration panel allows for the customization of appearance and the option to send a user-friendly version of the site to any iPhone, Android, Palm Pre or the BlackBerry Storm without having to manipulate any of the code.
Another plug-in that is useful for the small business owner is the “Fast Secure Contact Form.” This is a customizable contact form that gives the option of letting visitors send you emails all the while blocking automated spam email.
These really just touch the tip of the iceburg with WordPress plug-ins, but it’s a great place to start when launching your business website from scratch. If you need to find more plug-in, there’s hundreds available in the WordPress plug-in directory.
This is a guest post by Lorna Li, a marketing expert for a global CRM company by day, and green business enthusiast by night. Visit her green marketing blog for tips on social enterprise and green business marketing.
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