Live in Cleveland at the excellent Content Marketing World 2011 Conference one of the most important questions you can ask is how fascinating is your Content? This is another way of asking does your blog engage visitors, or are they bouncing?

The "GodFather of Conent Marketing," Joe Pulizzi takes the stage at Content Marketing World 2011 in Cleveland

Ok. You don’t want your Content to suck. How do you make sure of it? Keynote speaker, Sally Hogshead, author of Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation, has some great ideas for that. She related the story of a ride at Disneyland which offered an Orange ticket for the dangerous version, and a Green ticket for the other version. If you choose the Orange ticket, you get a sickness bag and other cautions. People tweeted, messaged, and sent pics for that version. After Hogshead rode that dangerous Orange version of the ride, she went back and rode the Green version. It was the same exact ride. Same content.

I had a friend once who was quite good at sales and with people skills. If you asked him a question, he could have simply answered it by giving a couple of examples. But instead, my friend would clap his hands together and then separate them with both index fingers held straight up. “Two reason, Mr. Frangos,” he would say, perfectly timed with his fingers. Captivating.

Does your Content do that? The answer comes when you get to the bottom of what you are in business to do online. Publishing? Sure… but the point is you are also in… entertainment.

Here are five more key Content Marketing take-aways from the conference, which I look forward to attending next year:

1. To analyze how your content is performing (from a Keynote discussion with Brian Clark of CopyBlogger.com, and Michael Stelzner of SocialMediaExaminer.com): take a look at Page Views, Comments, and Retweets (in more than one venue, with emphasis on Google+ as an up and comer), then… follow your intuition — it’s a science and an art!
2. To drive results — work backwards from a desired action at your site(s), like getting leads, and set up your content to lead people in that direction.
3. Blog vs. White Paper?  Ardith Albee, author of eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, (recommended) has this advice when you are considering what format for a release of important content:  “It’s not about the format… it’s about the content.”  I think she is spot on, though it does bear some consideration how a White Paper might be seen as more “portable” in terms of getting people to email it around in a viral fashion.
4. Deploy “Momentum Accelerators“:  Also from Ardith Albee, another gem — think about ways to build momentum with your content including follow on offers, and “conversational take-aways”, where you imagine a prospect in a corporation walking out of his/her office and going down the hall to another decision maker to share with some excitement an insight and solution tip they learned at your site.
5. Deliver the Truth:  Finally, one of my favorite lines from the show came from comedian, writer, director, actor and producer, Kevin Smith (recall his character, “Silent Bob” from the “Clerks” series of films).  Smith left us with this thought during the closing Keynote:  “If you want to really stand out in this world… you have to be honest.”  He said he has a little prayer before he goes on stage where he asks, “God, let me be honest.”  How honest is your content?

I’ve found that many marketers are overlooking lesser known techniques for WordPress Content Marketing strategy.  We’ll examine three tactics in this post, and to keep it simple, I’ll narrow down desired on-site Content Marketing goals to two categories:  engagement (visitors view 3 or more pages), and lead generation for B2B.  We’ll leave ecommerce sales aside for now, and in this post look at 3 ways to use WordPress tools to increase engagement, and so lower your bounce rates.  In a future post, I’ll cover lead generation tactics using WordPress.

Above (click to enlarge) we have added several key post categories to our "Blog" menu item to elevate awareness of available content.

Remember to Add Important Categories to your WordPress Menus

Category archives are landing pages too.  Not only does Google index them, but they also provide a gateway to important content on your site, so your tactic here is to surface links to important categories in a highly visible position.  Most content marketers using WordPress do so using a sidebar widget — but there’s an easy, and more visible way to do this.  I’ll share it with you, but first… how do you know which categories are most important to your visitors?  Analytics.

Check Analytics first to see what categories visitors frequent, but since they are likely not being promoted a lot on your site, check also for what key phrases your visitors use before visiting your site — both answers are available in Analytics.  Then, your tactic is  to use the new WordPress 3.x menu system to add categories as selectable items on a pop-down menu.

Most people only think of showing links to pages, and sometimes posts — but why not promote categories of content that you know visitors are seeking on your site?  And, when you do make sure you write a keyword-rich description that appears at the top of your categories — good themes like our Thematic-MAX framework build in the ability to do this.
TIP:  You can reword the Category Title in the Link to something more compelling — then watch “in-page Analytics” to see if your click-through rate increases.

Above (click to enlarge) are some settings with a MaxRef Widget to reveal key content.

Use Sidebar Widgets to Reveal, Engage, and Reduce Bounces

Most WordPress users know about the “Recent Posts” widget that comes standard with WordPress, but what about promoting older posts that are equally important, and for which your Analytics reports show a high degree of interest?

WebFadds has produced a great Content Marketing plugin  after considering much the same questions — MaxRef Widgets (I’d also like to give thanks to Newt Barret, co-Author of “Get Content, Get Customers” who prompted some of these ideas, originally).  “MaxRef” stands for Maximum Reference to content, and the reason we added an “s” to Widget, is that you can use as many as you need in your sidebars and widget locations — we often place one in the footer area to re-engage visitors who have scrolled to the bottom of a page, and are thinking about leaving.

We’re pleased that MaxRef Widgets has a 5-Star rating with over 4,000 downloads at the WordPress plugin repository.  Our screenshot (click to enlarge) shows an example tactic to use its various settings to reveal posts about how Landing Page Optimization helps your ROI.  Of course you can use it for a different strategy, like rotating overall posts into view so visitors may engage with less recent, but equally valuable content.

Link to searches on your blog based on Analytics Key Phrases

WordPress automatically presents a dynamically updated lists based on keywords or phrases entered into its built-in search field(s).  So the next time you write a post, here are three steps to take:

• First check your Analytics for visitor patterns including what keywords/key phrases relating to your post are popular
• Do a search on your WordPress CMS for the phrase* you decide upon.  Copy the URL that results (in your browser).
• Past that into your post using relevant text.  Here are two examples:  Content Marketing  |  Landing Page Optimization

*TIP:  Research shows that Google users are frequently typing in 2-4 word phrases, rather than just a single keyword.

One of the best things you can do to wring more ROI out of your website is to optimize for desired business results like sales leads.  Few clients are doing this yet.  Why?  Not in their habit path, no one understands it, or sometimes even worse — they are making faith based assumptions (“I think this is going to work”) and gambling their web results on guesswork.  WebFadds provides testing services, and to help you understand more about them and how to be successful with them — here are some strategies and tactics with visuals to help:

• Measurable Desired Business Outcome(s):  What is the desired, and measurable result that your MarCom team  wants?  For B2B, this is often leads generated via a lead form, and to track conversion rates, we need a unique “thank you” page that a prospect sees only after filling out the form.  Sometimes it’s “engagement.” Sometimes a download of an important White Paper.  We can’t improve results unless they are well defined and trackable.
• General Factors that Improve Results:
  • The clarity and strength of your value proposition:  Often, clients are unclear on the question of why choose this company and its product or service.  Another mistake is to believe that visitors will choose to surf the site and figure out their value –not true and dangerous for two reasons:  they may not take the time to do this, and even if they do they may take the time, they may form a very different concept of value about your company,  its services and products.   State the value clearly on the testing page.  You have the opportunity to help them visualize and “feel” good about your company — take it.
  • Reduce “friction”:  Anything that feels too hard or takes too long = friction.  Longer forms do not convert as well as shorter forms.
  • Reduce “anxiety”:  People worry about the credibility of a company, and what they will do with email and other personal information.
  • Increase motivation:  Promise them something like a free white paper, etc.

Types of Tests

• VBO – Visitor Behavior Optimization: In VBO, we are interested in the “Why” of visitor behavior, beyond the “What” we get from Analytics. Sometimes “Where” too. One popular method here is to get a heat map of where people click on particular pages, then ask they questions that get to the “why” for the behavior.  This is good to test a design before you even implement it, because the visitors are just reacting to a JPG of the page.  Another type of VBO test you can take is an exit survey to help you answer the “Why” of visitor behavior.  Analytics answers “what” your site visitors do and don’t do, but not why — so the best thing to do is simply ask visitors questions that help you understand more about their behavior relating to your desired business outcomes.
  
  Above are some results of one kind of VBO test we did for Content Marketing Institute , and  for International Performance Group (Click to Enlarge).  It provided feedback on where people tend to click on the page (heatmap at left), and also what they remembered and believed the site to be about.
  
• LPO Landing Page Optimization:  This is probably what I will recommend for this client based on your comments.  Here we focus on improving desired business results on only one page.
  • We work with either Google Website Optimizer, or another good option Visual Website Optimizer.  Each offer certain strengths — VWO offers a WordPress CMS plugin, for example.
  • A/B Test: Here you are testing two separate page designs.  This requires a complete separate design for each page, and approximately 1000 unique visitors for a valid test (see next point).  Google has a short video example:
    
    
  • Multivariate Test: Here you only need one page, but you test different combination of persuasive elements on that page to optimize for desired business outcomes.  One popular set to test is:  Two Headlines, Two Persuasive Images, and Two Calls to action.  You would then be showing six different page element combinations to visitors, so you would need 3000 unique visitors for a valid test (see next point).  Google has a short video example:
    
    

• CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization: This one is similar to the nature of LPO in that you are interested in increasing the number of desired business outcomes, called “conversions” in analytics (when a visitor completes a lead form they “convert” from a visitor to a prospect). The main difference here is that you usually will take a series of pages into consideration — the sales “funnel” leading from your home page to a secondary page to an actual desired outcome page, for example.
  Above (click to enlarge) is a “funnel visualization” (series of pages leading to a goal) for a client that would like to have more visitors download their whitepaper.  CRO often involves looking at which pages are not functioning well to get visitors to complete a desired business outcome, and here one problem is the homepage.  They have no call to action on their home page to funnel visitors to this goal.
• Number of Visitors to get a Valid LPO Test: Think 1000 for an A/B test (500 interact with each page), and 3000 for a 3 element Multivariate Test (500 visitors interact with each of six page element combinations).  Google adwords is an excellent way to gather visitors for a test (figure .50 cents average per click, or $500 for 1000 visitors plus management fee).  CRO tests may require move visitors.  We can give you a quote on managing your PPC ad campaign.

Two Final Pieces of Optimization Test Advice:

• Always be testing — drive this tactic into your marketing culture, and you will definitely see an increase in ROI.
• Avoid the HIPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion), because at best when a C-Level Manager says “I think this will work”, you are gambling on faith instead of asking your prospects and customers directly via VBO, LPO, and CRO testing.

Read more here:  WebFadds VBO-Max Services |  Contact us today for a quote.

Now you can take advantage of the new, simple — it’s drag and drop — menu system in WordPress 3.0 to reveal all types of content at your website. It’s a new CMS feature that lets you bring posts, categories, tags and more, directly to your navigation menu – great for content marketing strategy. This is important for “Visitor Behavior Optimization” (VBO) where you make adjustments to your dynamic site structure based on a review of Analytics and other testing reports (more on VBO in a future video).

Learn more about using WordPress 3.0 Menus in this 3.5 minute video…

If you find yourself squinting — watch in a larger window at Screencast.com.

Video Production & Distribution Note:  We use Jing Pro by TechSmith to produce our videos, then upload them both to the Jing Site and also to YouTube.com for a double marketing reach.  So far we like the quality that Jing delivers better than the standard compression delivered at YouTube.

There are a lot of short overview videos about using your WordPress CMS at WordPress.tv. We’ve also done a few that include some strategic tips about optimizing your CMS. Below is a good overview video about WordPress — it’s getting older, but you can still get some good tips. For newer videos from WebFadds bookmark our new Videos Category.

Optimization Tip: As I say in the video below, you’re not optimizing a website — you’re optimizing how visitors think about your website and the actions they take including completing key business goals at your site. I recommend you take a good look in Analytics at the new “on page Analytics” that shows you “hot-spot” activity on your pages — where visitors click. Make sure those clicks are tied to goals you’ve set, like submitting a lead form. At right is a thumbnail you may click to review how this looks for our own site. Note that you not only see where visitors click but also get key insights to how those clicks may lead to goal completions, and other visitor behavior including what they do after scrolling down the page, “beneath the fold”. Contact us for an estimate to take your Google Analytics to the MAX with actionable advice.

Video: Overview of Using WordPress as your CMS:

Wouldn’t it be good if you could get 20% – 70% more leads from your site? Many companies do. What about increases of 200% – 400%? It’s possible. I’ll tell you how. And, we’ll see if the “description” tags most of us use to craft copy for search returns are outdated, plus we’ll consider an important new Twitter service… it’s commerce time for tweeters.

Conversion Alert: Are there ways to squeeze more ROI out of your website? Definitely, and recent studies show the pay-off can be very big. I attended a webinar this week by a company specializing in squeezing more results — conversions (like when a visitor “converts” to a prospect, etc.) — out of landing pages and direct emails. So far every single company that applies a certain conversion success formula has seen increases… and some of them are huge — over 200%. To prove it to yourself, all you need is a free Google analytics account set-up properly to track goals, conversions and related ROI numbers. Then you use another free tool — the Google “Optimizer” to test for winning combinations of headlines, graphics, and calls to action. We can make this happen with a Landing Page Optimization Campaign – contact me for a quote.

Google Evolution: Have you squinted at the Google search results page lately? If you do, you’ll see a “show options” link  at top left, which when clicked reveals a sidebar of search refinements like related videos, forums, past week returns and more. Nice. But for SEO professionals and “Content Masters,” still another Google development adds a new twist on ways to succeed in search ranking, attracting visitors and inspiring conversions: “Rich Snippets.” Now Google is encouraging webmasters to mark-up content so that Google will find and return more meaningful excerpts than what is commonly delivered in search returns. Watch for plugins to facilitate this work.

Above, watch video presentation by Google experts on new Rich Snippets tactics

Twitter Update: It’s commerce time on Twitter folks. You knew it had to happen. Check out Twitpay’s new RT2Buy service . So now for all those who ask just what is the ROI for twittering? You can have a direct answer in the form of revenue via your twitter followers. We have a great program — our Social Media-MAX Package – to build a focused, targeted list of followers efficiently — contact me today.

So… how are your landing pages… and now, your growing Twitter list(s) converting? Time to call an Optimizer – reach me at (360) 566-2451.

Playing Ball: Innovation, change, and Social Media Marketing growth… it’s happening rapidly each week.  Last week, Twitter reported astronomic growth — up 422% in 12 months. WordPress reported 2 million business blog and CMS installations in 2008.  Wow.  Talk about “playing ball on running water.”  How do you grab a hold of this tiger and make efficient and effective use of it in Business?  I’ll give you some pointers on how to stay optimized.

CMS Thought of the Week: The *whole web* is your Content Management System.  Today, I was checking my LinkedIN homepage, and reviewed a number of blog posts — there — from friends and colleagues.  The same posts often show up in my twitter stream (shortened into 140 characters with links back to posts). And, Google lets you create a sort of “mash-up” via Google reader (for RSS feeds) where you can share your posts and those of others — see: my Google Reader Public Mashup.  Are you optimized to take advantage of these key web CMS techniques?  Contact me and we’ll work on it together.

Twitter Tips of the Week: If you’re looking for a job, check this link to an excellent Mashable article (a great web publication, using a CMS developed in WordPress) will help you learn how — on Twitter.  That’s right!  I’ve found and worked with two clients there in two weeks.  Plus… even if you’re not looking now… consider the article carefully and you’ll understand some key Twitter Social Media Marketing strategies and Tactics.

Next, look carefully at the “Five Phases of Social Media Marketing” — Social Marketing is not “free”, but it will pay off when you tie it into Analytics… and — analyze for conversions (that’s the R.O.I. secret).  One great question from the article:  “Will your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system interface with your social media tools?”  Watch for good CRM’s to start adding in Twitter functionality.

WordPress Eding Tips on Video: WordPress is a great CMS solution — we develop exclusively with it.  As you learn WordPress, and start managing the admin. area, you may like to review these short (approx. 2 min.) videos.  There are more available at WordPress.tv, but these are my “A-List” to help your work be optimized… in WordPress:

Posts:

• writing-and-publishing-a-post
• using-quick-edit-and-bulk-edit-to-manage-your-posts-in-half-the-time
• saving-and-returning-to-draft-posts-pages
• publishing-your-post-at-a-later-date

Add Categories & Tags to Your Posts (always do this — good for both SEO, and helpful site navigation):

• adding-categories-and-tags-to-your-posts

Pages:

• creating-a-post-excerpt-using-the-more-tag

Sidebar:

• adding-a-widget-to-your-sidebar

There you go.  That should help you optimize your WordPress and Social Media work.  Now… about those conversions? Have you optimized your landing pages so you can increase your conversion rates?  Contact me.

WordPress CMS News: A new report shows WordPress taking a leading position as one of the top four Open Source Content Management Solutions — read more here.  Version 2.8 is coming soon, and rumored to add even more flexible CMS capabilities.  If you have upgraded to 2.7.x, the upgrade to 2.8 will be easy — no expensive programmer required… just push a button.  If now… contact us, and we can upgrade you.

Are you optimized for Twittering yet? Social Media Marketing is coming fast and hard, with Twitter a major force (see below).  You will find me twittering @webfadds (and Spirit too). And, there are ways to optimize and automate — I’ll show you some here.

Not yet? Well, maybe you’re still on the fence about the “business worthiness” of Tweeting. It’s simply micro-blogging for business people and you are out there letting people get to know you before they buy. Why? People buy from people they know. It’s that simple. Add to that the ability to brand and establish authority in your niche.

And, the Twittersphere itself is offering increasingly useful tools to take your twittering to the next level…

Twitter Resources:

• Polling? You bet — check out: StrawPoll
• Productivity? It’s covered. Track Daily Goals with a social twist of accountability  | An event manager that auto-links to Google Maps, updates your Google Calendar, and auto-invites via Twitter  | Twitter for Organizations | Share files on Twitter
• Job Search? You got it… a job search engine for Twitter
• Research? Check it out… Track Trends and Events with TwitScoop | Tweetscan hunts for topics of interest and sends you an alert
• Publicity? Of course. TweeTube shares photos, YouTube videos, multiple website urls and more (from your iPhone too)
• Staying Efficiently Organized? Right. Have a good look at Easy Tweets* to promote your business and monitor your brands featuring an easy, efficient dashboard (we include coaching for this service in our Social Media MAX pack)
• In Gmail? Yup. Get an app to do Twitter from Gmail (another reason why Google is watching carefully)

Interesting Business Marketing Use of Twitter: ForkFly — a service providing discounts from hundreds of Portland, Oregon merchants. Hmmmmm. Get a following, sell access to focused followers. Earn money. Opportunity knocks.

Another Interesting, Government (hey… looks like they can be efficient sometimes) use of Twitter: If you are a Twitter user you can get northbound Canadian border wait times by sending a direct message to WSDOT – the Washington State Department of Transportation.

Is all of this useful in business? Well, what is one closed sale worth to you? Ten? I had a business meeting last week with a prospect I found on twitter, and am estimating proposals this week. Still questioning it? I agree, in business you have to focus on ROI… so do it. You can track it — Web Analytics Word is reported that Ominiture, a popular commercial Analytics provider, is integrating with Twitter.

Time to Get Going: We have a new package — Social Media-MAX Pack – here at WebFadds to help you get going. You leverage your Business Blog in a synergy with Twitter to engage prospects and leads… and learn about your niche. We coach and train you on efficiency in addition to installing and configuring your package. Contact us to start today.

It works. A week ago, I had 38 followers on Twitter. Now I have 295 (at time of writing), 344 predicted later this week, with over 1,000 predicted ( by yet another twitter service, of course) next month…

How did I do it? I’m practicing what I teach… using the synergy in our Social Media-MAX Pack is very powerful. Like a rocket. Watch me prove this @webfadds.

Is it fake? No.  Not if your intent is actually to engage colleagues and prospects in dialog about your niche focus, and business passions (with a bit of the personal side sprinked in, so people can know you too).  There are automated tools that save you time, but if you proceed ethically, (no spam) with honest intent… it’s for real.  You’ll probably see a few “fakes”… but Twitter is pretty quick to close down those accounts.

You can use our “old technology” contact form to get started… or just contact me on Twitter. And, we can chat about ways to increase conversions at your site too.

* WebFadds is an authorized reseller for Easy Tweets.  You’ll find excellent service and features (more coming… in Beta now) from the support folks there.

Social Media Marketing — who has time for this busy new marketing strategy? Busy indeed, but optimizable using automated techniques… I’ll tell you how.

What is Social Media Marketing? Simply put, it’s the use of new technologies — from blogging to twitter tweets — to engage prospects for your company’s services and products.

Is Social Media Marketing (SMM) on the Rise? Yes. You know — I resisted Twitter for some time due to my perception that it was juvenile and had no real business purpose. Wrong.

One example of how I was wrong about Twitter, and a tip for you: I used a new Nearby Tweets Search Engine (Twitter posts are called “Tweets”) recently to find out who was talking about similar business strategies in my neighborhood. Results? I have five leads, and one coffee meeting scheduled to discuss new business. Could I have looked up related businesses on Google? Perhaps. But I would not have known who was actively and currently focusing on certain business topics. That’s the key, and you can easily do the same.

Take a look below at the “Benefits of Social Media Marketing” chart which appears in a whitepaper, free for the download, by Michael Stelzner, who interviewed 900 business people and marketers for his research. You’ll get some great insights when you read the report.

Above, over 900 business professionals report positive results using Social Media Marketing methods (from Social Media Marketing Industry Report, by Michael Stelzner)

How to understand SMM and make it work? Two recommendations: Think about standard sales and marketing principles in new venues. Look for automation.

On the first point, just think about standard sales methods and think of social media a bit like those “business after hours” prospecting events that sales people always attend. You tune in, listen, make yourself known, and schmooz around a bit. People buy from those they know.

Of course, you’ve still got to find the time to make the switch from old ways of doing things to new. Good news. Since the new “venue” for Social Media Marketing is online, on computers, some of the work may be automated. I want to caution you — you still have to get in there and “hand out cards” and make your personality known… that’s what it’s all about.

Which social media sites for business? There are a lot of choices out there, but for now, I recommend concentrating on just three: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIN. These are market leaders, each with a different focus and functionality, and I have seen all three bring business for our clients.

New WebFadds Social Media Max Service: Now about automation — one of the reasons we’re focused on CMS solutions using the WordPress platform (in addition to SEO strengths) is the excellent sets of plugins to add features and streamline your work. We have identified eight key plugins for SMM which in particular automate blog postings to twitter, and facebook walls, display of feeds from twitter in your blog, display of linked in information, and more.

We will install and configure this Social Media Max package on your WordPress Content Management System for $739. Need your Facebook, LinkedIN, and Twitter accounts set-up too? No problem — we’ll do it for $339. Includes initial coaching on working these services for business “conversion” purposes. We then set up your Easy Tweets controls for a powerful way to grow your twitter following, and channel them back to your business blog (we coach you on success with your Easy Tweets – $25mo. account). And for a limited time, we’ll include installation of Google Analytics at your site to help you track your site for conversion health. Contact me today to get started.

That’s enough Optimizing for this time — remember to always be converting.

#3 on Google in less than 19 Minutes: What’s the true power of a Business Blog? Well, you know I always focus on conversions. But before you can convert a visitor to a customer, you have to have visibility. And once your Blog gets accepted as a trusted source for information in your market niche (about 2-3 months of steady posting at least twice a week for new blogs), then your latest posts will go up fast — and rise to the top if your content is good.

A case example is a blog post on camp cooking contests we put up Saturday morning at SportsExposBlog.com, during their four-day tradeshow, where each day selling more tickets is a key to success. Within 19 minutes, that post was #3 on Google for the search, “Cooking Contests, Salt Lake City.” Great for immediate, and targeted visibility for those interested in reviewing cooking contests.  It’s still in position #4 on Google as I write this post.  Another client, Tom Hale — an Adwords Expert Extraordinaire — regularly sees his posts register high on Google in under 10 minutes.

SEO Technique Tip: First, the business blog for SportsExposBlog.com is developed on the WordPress platform, which out of the box provides a number of ways to Optimize for Search Engines. Then, we used a professional SEO plugin called HeadSpace (see articles about how HeadSpace works here ) and configured it for the phrase “Cooking Contests”, and the locality, “Salt Lake City”, for that specific post. It worked.

Why WordPress as a CMS? Last week I was at the Portland Search Engine Marketing Professionals annual Search Fest — a day of seminars and trainings on tips, traps, and techniques for this rapidly evolving field. There, a sales rep. told me that WordPress was not a CMS. Huh? Funny, it seems that Ford Motors, Comacho Cigars, CNN, the New York Times, and a host of other Fortune 500 players didn’t get that memo. They’re all enjoying the strengths of WordPress as their primary Content Management Solution. Of course, the sales rep. was, well, repping his own proprietary CMS based on Microsoft’s unpopular ASP.net platform.

There are several platforms out there offering CMS solutions, ranging from Cold Fusion, to Open Source PHP/MySQL, to Ruby on Rails, and ASP.net. Check around, and you will find many more options in the PHP realm, of which WordPress is arguably one of the top five choices. Way back in 2007, WordPress won “Best Open Source Social Networking CMS” from Packt Publishing.

What’s the best CMS solution for your company? Well, WebFadds, of course, can make the case for WordPress. But I admit, you’ll see some great contenders out there. A young fellow on a plane I took to Salt Lake City last week showed me an impressive proprietary CMS built in the Ruby on Rails environment. One big choice is Proprietary (you pay one company for a license and rely on them to continually improve your CMS) versus “Open Source” (the initial core program is free to download and install, and upgrades are free).

WordPres wins again, since it is in this initially “free” category.  But to be frank, free is not really free. You will want to custom configure and tweak it for maximum SEO and administration optimization — and that costs some money. But I think you’ll see that WordPress still wins when you compare your R.O.I. to other systems over the mid-term.  And, optimization with WordPress is not just about SEO — you’ll also streamline your content administration wrok.

Contact me — I’ll be pleased to work with you to find the best solution for your R.O.I… and, take a look at this overview: CMS WebSite Solutions with WordPress.