We have been hearing from a number of folks lately who have very similar needs -- they need a professional web presence that is readily updated but have a very small budget to work with.
Our advice? Consider a blog (web log).
Although blogs won't work, for all companies, many businesses today are leveraging blog technology as a part of their web site or even the whole of their web site.
Blogs can offer a number of distinct advantages over more traditional web sites:
- Minimal upfront investment - often blog software is free or inexpensive to use. Top blog platforms include: WordPress, Blogger, & Movable Type
- Readily updated - blog platforms offer easy-to-use Microsoft Word-like interfaces to add and format your entries so you do not need to know HTML in order to post your content on the web.
- Very short time to market - if you don't need any customization, you can have a blog up and running in a matter of minutes. Obviously, if you want your blog to be unique, professional and express your business personality, you may need to invest more time and money, but at base you can start in a matter of minutes.
- Readily Searchable - blog platforms are developed to be readily searched by the top search engines, some are even developed BY the search engine companies (Blogger, for example, is owned by Google).
- Multiple ways to browse content - You can “tag” content (label content with key words or categories) and those "tags" serve as navigation as well as categorization for your content. Visitors who enter your site through a search engine, for example, can readily find other postings of interest by clicking on that posting's labels.
- Organic growth of the site - Building content can be one of the toughest parts of doing your website. Websites with pre-defined navigation often yield "Coming Soon!" messages as a result. If you use tagging/labels as your navigation, then your navigation grows as your content grows and for your site visitors, there is no sense that something is missing. If you do it right, what's there, is there -- properly categorized, searched and labeled.
This approach can be particulary appropriate for businesses who provide services as blogs can:
- Help to establish your expertise in your industry - blogs are a key source of information on the internet, by posting meaningful articles about your business, you can demonstrate your experience and knowledge.
- Provide insight into your process - potential clients often want to know what to expect in the process. A Blog can be the perfect medium for revealing your process if you journal your projects that are currently underway.
- Humanizing - By giving your company's web site a "voice", a blog can humanize your site in a way that other forms of content do not.
Another thing to consider is that choosing to implement a blog does not shut any doors for creating a more traditional web site in the future. Blogs can serve as affordable stepping stones to more traditional sites or can be incorporated into a larger web site when it comes online. Blogs can also serve as a testing ground for your site content as well. If you have the ability to track visits to your blog, you can see what content is of interest to your visitors and re-purpose it in your full web site.
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