Outer Banks Businesses

Recently the Outer Banks SCORE Chapter asked me to do a seminar on WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google Plus and Constant Contact. In this post I will discuss Social Media and WordPress.

The one thing Facebook, Twitter and other Social Media have in common with WordPress is they are all types of Blogs. Blog is short for Web Log. Since we are in the Outer Banks most of you are familiar with the Captains Log or if a Star Trek fan you recall the program starting with “Captains Log Star Date ….” at the beginning of each show. That is one way to view a Web Log or Blog.

Each Blog system tries to appeal to a niche market or tries to do something better than the competition. Facebook has taken the majority of the market from MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

Twitter is still used by those in the United States with short attention spans or ADD. (around 300 million users as of 2011)

LinkedIn was developed mainly for professionals. It is still used by a good number of CEO’s, businesses owners and other professionals. (around 120 million users as of 2011)

Facebook appeals to a large number of people (800 million users as of 2011) as MySpace once did. MySpace dropped from the most visited website (surpassing Google in the U.S.) to the 138th most visited site in 2011. MySpace fell from over 100 million users to around 33 million as of 2011. Facebook surpassed MySpace in 2009.

Google Plus aka Google + was launched in June 2011 as an invitation only system. I was one of those invited and took Google up on their offer July 2011. Google Plus opened its doors to the public 20 Sep 2011 to anyone 18 and older. There are lots of nice features that beat Facebook. However, it will be some time until it takes over, if ever, due to the difficulty people have with change.

On December 27, 2011, it was reported that Google+ had surpassed an estimated user base of 62 million. The site is adding an estimated number of 625,000 new users a day, which may total 400 million members by the end of 2012, according to independent analysis of its growth.

There are nearly 100 Social Media systems out there and WordPress works with all of them making WordPress the preferred platform for business.

WordPress comes in many forms. You can get a free WordPress Blog at WordPress.com. Like most free systems it has limitations and could be pulled off the market without warning. This happened to at least 38 million users of Geocities which was purchased by Yahoo.com and then suddenly shut down. Beware of free offers like this.

WordPress.org is for web professionals that want to take their clients further than a personal blog. With enough web savvy the average business owner can set up their own individually hosted system and start blogging. However, the time and talent it takes to do a custom design, add things that help with SEO (search engine optimization), link to other Social Media systems, make the site mobile compliant, have it load faster by compressing data and caching as well as subscriptions and security measures can be daunting.

WordPress.com runs on a similar system as EverythingOuterBanks.com. This one is called WordPress Multi Site which had several names before this one. It allows for subwebs and subdomains. Without going into detail you can have a website with us that is a subweb and it would appear like this in the address bar of your browser: everythingouterbanks.com/yourbusinessname. Fill in yourbusinessname with your business like colingtoncreekinn. For 10 to 20 dollars you can then buy a domain name and point it to that web address. This makes it easier to put on a business card. We provide these systems for $99 per year. Since you are attached to one of the Outer Banks most popular websites you will receive more traffic than if you got one from WordPress.com.

Additionally, WordPress is Open Source and there are thousands of contributors making it better for free. The main way WordPress expands functionality is through something called Plugins. Plugins do many hundreds of different things. There are also many plugins that do the same thing. Each one should be analyzed for your particular needs. The down side of free plugins is they may not be supported after a major WordPress update. It is up to the developer to fix the plugin but if they have no interest or did not receive enough donations the plugin may become unusable.

We use a series of free plugins but also belong to WPMUDEV.org which allows us to provide our clients with fully supported plugins. You can spend $420 per year and join them or simply get your system from us and have all the best plugins available at no extra cost to you. You will get expert help and we will install any plugin you want from WPMUDEV.org as well as web site hosting for $500 per year. Development and set up fees additional. Additional advertising options, coupons and more available.

The botton line best system to get is an individually hosted WordPress website. We develop it for you and let you edit the pages, images, text and posts as well as add pages and posts to your hearts desire. Your website should always be primary to Social Media. Your website will always be yours but Social Media will come and go.