Need a community website for your volunteer group, club, church, or other community organization? Are you a curious, hands-on beginner that would like to DIY (do it yourself)?
If so, you’ve come to the right place!
Lynda.com has just released its newest course: WordPress and Genesis DIY: Community Website
What does the Course Cover?
DIY isn’t just about copying/pasting and blindly following instructions. The course will give you the “whys” behind every step, so that you end up with not only a website, but also a better understanding of how to plan and scope a web project.
In a little over an hour, you will learn how to create a website complete with:
custom home page
blog
events calendar
discussion forums
contact and submission forms
and more, of course 🙂
You will learn everything from site planning and finding the right plugins, to installing a new child theme and customizing the appearance of your site to make it match your organization.
This course also requires that you have a copy of the Genesis Framework from StudioPress. While you can use ANY Genesis child theme to build your community site, you will need to pick up a copy of the Education Pro theme if you want to follow along exactly with the course.
Start Your Free Trial
* I’m an affiliate for both Lynda.com and the Genesis Framework. Some of the links above are affiliate links.
– By Marcia Coffey
Find Marcia on Google+
Call Marcia at 561.906.3436
How much should a website cost?
Website cost? You won’t like the answer … because there isn’t one!
A one-off website quote is nearly impossible. Here’s why:
1) Website design and development should be viewed as a service, not a product. Websites are not commodities like flour, oranges and grapefruit.
Websites are something that someone, often many people, have to put together. Viewing it as service-based will help you understand why a one-off price isn’t simple to give — building a website takes continued time and effort.
2) Building a website involves a complex level of planning. Detail is an integral part of web development — and this greatly affects pricing.
3) Quotes are far too subjective. Building a website can be accomplished in hundreds of different ways. Go out for a quote and I guarantee by asking just a few developers for a price, you’ll get responses all over the map. How can that be possible?
4) The definition of success for your website may vary from person to person. A designer may think a great website should look like a piece of art, a developer may prefer a site using the latest, greatest code, and a marketer will focus on SEO optimization.
The truth? The real success of your website comes down to your business goals and how you want your website to fulfill those goals.
5) The web development industry has very few standards. How one person or company goes about building a website may be completely different than another. For example, there are dozens of languages used to program a website, as well as many platforms and systems. This is made even more intricate when you factor in that each solution can be reached in 1000 different ways. This lack of uniformity certainly causes an issue when determining price.
There’s truly no good answer to the question, “How much should a website cost?”
After all these years I still can’t answer this question!
– By Marcia Coffey
Find Marcia on Google+
Or, call Marcia, WordPress web designer, at 561.906.3436.
Follow @jmgroupdesign
BigCommerce Startup Package
First steal one classic shopping cart! Specifically a fantastic, complete and competitive eCommerce package by BigCommerce. With big business features at small business prices, BigCommerce offers: 100+ features at no extra charge, built-in marketing tools and mobile-friendly, stunning themes, point-and-click design tools and customizable CSS/HTML.
Basic BigCommerce Package $835
You choose the standard BigCommerce template that best fits your layout needs and I will take it from there.
Graphic Elements Include:
Use of existing design elements (logo, photos, etc)
Logo / Graphic Design work (as needed)
Header Design
Site Wide CSS to match
Matching background
Linked Social Media Buttons
10 products uploaded, prices added only.
Basic tutorial on how to upload content and set up back office.
This package includes no custom programming, graphics only!
– By Marcia Coffey
Find Marcia on Google+
Call Marcia, BigCommerce Web Designer, at 561.906.3436.
Follow @jmgroupdesign
Easy Start Up Realtor Marketing
1) Use WordPress for Your Real Estate Website
First, a blog IS a website, so don’t continue to think of them differently. There are differences in how they store and display content, but you can make a blog-based site look like the websites you’re used to, but it will be easier for you to maintain yourself, saving a huge amount of money. Blogs also do better with the search engines, so you’ll be accomplishing multiple Internet marketing goals by using a blog for your site. And, there is no better platform than the WordPress blogging software.
2) Become the “Area Expert” with Content Marketing
“Neighborhood Expert” is something that every realtor wants to be known for … in his or her marketplace. So how are some ways to show people, “What’s in it for them”? It’s simple. Write blog posts using LOCAL content that matches your marketplace’s interests. Learn about your marketplace and accurately determine what is most important to the people who live there. For example:
- Sometimes, it’s all about the children. Do you market to a suburban area that has lots of families living throughout the neighborhood? Why not pick occasional and timely seasonal pieces to grab their attention?
- Or it’s an active area with lots of local events and activities? Do you service a downtown area, or an area that has lots of community events and residents that are active and come out in droves to enjoy them? Why not give them customized events schedules that they will keep for months to come?
3) Republish Your Blog Posts with A MailChimp Newsletter
Once you’re blogging, you have some great current content on your site. But, how do you get more people to read it? You need to set up an automated e-newsletter that is delivered on your schedule to email subscribers. It will look good, and do away with the need for drip email to stay in touch.
4) Find Influential People with Twitter
A fantastic real estate marketing tool, Twitter helps you maintain and build your sphere of influence. Not all tweeters are equal. Some have huge followings and get lots of retweets. Some don’t. Part of your Twitter strategy should be to engage those who are already influential with your target audience. A couple of retweets from an influencer can really help you grow your following and get your content to a wider audience.
5) Connect With Facebook and LinkedIn
Two different platforms, Facebook is personal and social, while LinkedIn is networking and your online resume. Both can help to grow your business. Best of all, you can automatically feed your blog posts to these networks as well as Twitter. Get Twitterfeed. This re-publishing of what you’re posting in your blog is another way to amplify your web presence without doing more work.
6) Share Your Story with Video
Creative use of video is a concept that is just starting to take off as more and more agents begin to feel comfortable stepping away from the herd. Agents incorporate video marketing in several ways: Agent branding videos or “meet-the-agent” videos, using various innovative video techniques. Most important: whether you are branding your sense of humor or your down-to-basics method of doing business, videos should be polished to perfection.
Video increases the chance of a front-page Google result by 53x. — Forrester
– By Marcia Coffey
Find Marcia on Google+
Call Marcia, Genesis WordPress Web Designer, at 561.906.3436.
Follow @jmgroupdesign
The Secret to Google Search
Become an expert. Satisfy your target audience.
That simple.
Or do we make it complicated?
There are many distractions (like Google’s new Hummingbird algorithm) and the uphill battle to reside on the first page of Google … a lifelong obsession.
I should know. It is THE FIRST how-to question clients pose.
As a small business owner with limited time and budget, where do you start?
Start with A Plan:
1) Define your audience. Who are they? Why do they need your services? What’s their problem they are trying to solve? And why? When they call you on the phone, what are their primary questions and concerns? Spend some time on this. Get to know your ideal customer inside and out. It’s critical for the steps that follow.
2) Build your niched keyword phrases list, based on the answers to the above audience interests and location for a local business.
Say you’re a local General Dentist with cosmetic flare and an older clientele. Your all-important Title needs to start with benefit keywords, probably end with location keywords – example: “Implant Dentistry, Veneers, 24/7 Emergency Care, Aesthetic Dentistry of Jupiter
3) Create a professional WordPress website/blog that serves as the content engine for all of your social platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter etc.
4) Establish your expertise and brand by creating top-notch blog articles and other content. Such as …
- Testimonials from your bigger, more reputable customers who have brand recognition.
- How-to articles based on listening to your customers. What do they ask about in their support requests? If there’s a common question that you can answer with a how-to, then that’s what you’ll write about.
- Guest blog posts from other local business owners in a complementary industry. Make the pitch about them and how it will benefit their business.
5) Isolate the social platforms best suited to your business. They are free, time-eating monsters so you must concentrate on the important ones for YOU.
- Facebook is conversational and ideal if you want to interact directly with customers.
- Pinterest is a visual platform only and a great traffic generator.
- Twitter in its own twitterverse has endless possibilities – the perfect mobile tool, great for researching your industry and competition; today’s PR release uniquely suited to last minute, 140-character shoutouts/tweets.
- LinkedIn, your online resume, is a necessity for all serious business people.
- Google+ spans all businesses and is the automatic method to penetrate the enormous world of Google Search across all its platforms.
WHOA, this is a lot of work. How am I going to do this?
Answer: Think Quality and Consistency.
You will focus on creating high quality content only that will build your authority and reputation with your online community. You will do this within your own time frame (say as few as two blog posts per month) on a CONSISTENT basis.
Tenacity is not the same as persistence. Persistence is doing something again and again until it works. It sounds like ‘pestering’ for a reason. Tenacity is using new data to make new decisions to find new pathways to find new ways to achieve a goal when the old ways didn’t work. Telemarketers are persistent, Nike is tenacious.” – Seth Godin
– By Marcia Coffey
Find Marcia on Google+
Call Marcia, Genesis WordPress Web Designer, at 561.906.3436.
Follow @jmgroupdesign