Half of all small businesses have a website. We don’t have a firm number for what percentage of successful small businesses have websites, but we think it’s safe to say it’s considerably higher than fifty percent. We’re going to take a brief look at why the Average Joe business owner needs to dip a toe or ten into website ownership.
The Obvious Question
Still, there’s a common and understandable hesitancy on the part of many small business owners to make the necessary commitment of time and money to creating actual content for a website, particularly dynamic websites. It’s a commitment to an ongoing expense, and it’s not too crazy, from an outsider’s perspective, to wonder something along the lines of, “Why does my tile-and-brick-laying service need a blog? And what would I put on there, anyway?”
The Slightly Less Obvious Answer
Advertising. A website is the modern day equivalent of the Yellow Pages. And yes, the Yellow Pages still exist, we know; they’re fantastic for papier-mâché and propping up severely uneven table legs. No one uses them to find businesses anymore, though; they use Google.
So trying to run a business without a website is the equivalent of trying to run one without an ad in the phonebook ten or fifteen years ago. Hopefully that convinces you of the why because from here we’re jumping straight into the how.
Getting Started With a Website
You’re going to need a place to park your content, and that means you’ll need a website. There are plenty of rules to getting that right, but the big ones are to pick something short, memorable, related to your business in an obvious way, and not accidentally profane or humorous. That last one’s harder than you’d think if you’re going to be smushing words together.
A lot of beginners looking to start their first site get held up in by the intimidating aspects of technology. The good news is it doesn’t actually have to be that bad to learn or too expensive to get set up.
The reason is pretty simple: WordPress.
The Platform
WordPress powers a significant portion of the web at this point, and there’s a good reason for that. Most web hosts offer to set it up for you, and from there you’ve only got a small learning curve, aiding by numerous free guides and helpful resources from the community, to managing and updating your own site.
It provides the working structure of the site.
Themes
Themes are basically the decoration of your site. If you were to think of your website as a house, these would be the accents, the specific models of sinks, toilets, showers, etc. that are put in place over the basic website architecture provided by WordPress.
There are thousands of free and paid themes for the WordPress platform, so whatever look you’re going for, you can find.
Plugins
Plugins are extensions of functionality. To continue the house metaphor, they’re porches, wet bars, swimming pools; the extras you add to increase the utility of your home.
Tips and Resources for Managing WordPress Content
WordPress is designed to integrate well with most social media, and there are several plugins which significantly increase this potential. From a business perspective, you want only a few static pages, not a huge mess of them. In general, you want to tell anyone who reaches your site:
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Who you are.
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What you do.
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Why they should pick you over a competitor.
The rest is just details. Where things get interesting is in your final critical page: the page of posts, a.k.a. the blog.
Why Blog?
Because dynamic sites rank higher than static ones, and sites with blogs receive double the traffic, on average, compared to similar sites without blogs.
How to Start a Blog
Once you have a site up and running, starting the blog going is pretty straightforward; blogging is the core functionality and purpose of the entire WordPress platform. Still, there are things which need to be considered.
The first step is to think about who you want to have on your site. If you’re that brick-and-tile-layer mentioned at the start, you don’t want to waste your time writing (or paying someone to write) material for other brick-and-tile-layers; you want to bring in the people thinking about adding brick or tile to their homes, preferably soon.
So you might want to create content like, “The Six Most Expensive Mistakes of DIY Bricklayers,” or, “Ten Most Beautiful Tile Patterns You’ll Ever See” and so on. The first one is meant to bring in the dufus who’s really thinking about doing it himself, but doesn’t want to make a mistake. This is your chance to convince him it’s easier and cheaper to just hire you. The second article is there for people looking for ideas for their renovation. Either way, it’s aimed at potential customers.
Wrapping Up
There’s a lot more to it, of course, but this is your start. If we’ve convinced you it’s worth it to create a site, just head down the list and make things happen. It’s going to be a challenge, sure, but there’s lots of help out there, and if you give it a chance, you’ll likely have a lot of fun.