Both the .com and .org version use the WordPress open source platform, but the .com version is hosted by WordPress, while the .org needs to be hosted by a third party. Here’s a breakdown of the pros and cons of each:

WordPress.com

Pros:

• It’s free!
• Easy to set up for a novice
• Set up and upgrades are handled by WordPress
• Posts are automatically backed up
• Login is secure (SSL)

Pros:

• You can upload & customize themes
• Complete control over the source code
• You can add plugins
• WAY better for SEO than .com because of the control over site structure, titles, meta tags, page names, etc
• You can install the software on your own domain name

In summary, if you’re a student studying abroad or you’re taking a cross-country road trip and you want to highlight all your stops and places you’ve visited on a blog, then WordPress.com will work fine for you. It’s free and very easy to set up and use. Updates are done for you, and in the examples I gave above, it doesn’t matter that your blog address is a sub-domain of WordPress.

On the other hand, if you’re a professional business looking to develop a custom website that reflects your branding then you’ll definitely want to use WordPress.org. In fact, even if the branding and custom look isn’t that important to you, no legitimate business want their website url to be: mybusiness.wordpress.com. You want your business url to be unique. You also want to be able to have control over the SEO of the site, which with WordPress.org you have much more flexibility over. Now, keep in mind that you’ll likely need a website developer to build this website. You’ll also need to find a reliable hosting company.

As you can see, if you’re a business considering using  Wordpress.org there are definitely more costs involved, but the potential return you can get on your investment by using .org usually outweighs these additional costs.

If you’re interested in developing a WordPress.org website or blog and you need help, or you would just like to learn more about what the process entails, contact Turbo Social Media today or call us at 877-673-7096 x2.

Related posts:

1. Get The Most of Web 2.0 While Using WordPress 3.0
2. WordPress vs. HTML For a New Website
3. How to Optimize Your WordPress Blog Articles

Weebly was started in the North Beach apartment of a couple of guys in their early twenties. The apartment served as both an office and a place to live, and the founders would often find themselves working until 6am.

After four years of hard work the founders now have their own apartments and a separate office, and what began as a college project at Penn State University has emerged as a growing business.  Weebly helps businesses create their own websites for very low prices, similar to WordPress. While Weebly (7.5 million users) doesn’t have anywhere near the market share of WordPress (54 million), or Tumblr (25 million), their business powers 2 percent of the Internet, according to the research firm Netcraft.

Their business model relies on giving away a basic service for free, and relying on customers to pay for additional features. Thus far the model has worked, as the company became profitable less than a year after they raised an initial $650,000 in angel funding.

Weebly, despite its growth over the past four years, is run by a team of just 13 people. This is due in part to the founders’ desire to stay small. However, that will change next month, as they plan to move into an 11,000 square foot office space and double the number of employees.

Despite this growth Weebly is still in need of more funding, and a second round of investing is expected to be supplied by Sequoia Capital. Despite the fierce competition and need for more funding, Weebly’s founders see the potential. Dan Veltri, the Chief Operating Officer, claims that about 2 billion people have Internet connections, but there are only around 300 million websites.

The founders foresee a future where businesses have multiple websites, and they hope to tap into that potential market.

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2. Google Invests in Kabam
3. Co-Founder of Social Network Diasporo Dies

Did you know that 86% of Americans own a mobile phone? Now, more than ever, people are relying on their mobile phone for things like checking email, surfing the web, shopping, and much more.

As a result many larger companies are creating smart phone apps that allow for quick and easy access to information. They are also creating mobile versions of their website to make it easier for visitors to navigate the content of their site on a cell phone. If you don’t have a mobile compatible website, take a look at how it looks when you try to view it from your smart phone. Does the navigation and text look small? Is it difficult to jump from one link to another without having to enlarge? What you’ll find is that most websites that aren’t mobile compatible are frustrating to browse. And frustrated visitors lead to people leaving the your website.

So how do you make your website compatible for people looking you up on their smart phone? That depends on the platform your website is built on. If you have a WordPress website you’ll want to download an ithemes plugin and edit the CSS to match the design of your website. You’ll also want to design a header for your mobile site. Of course, you’ll have to purchase the license for the theme before you can do any of this.

If you need help creating a mobile compatible website then contact Turbo Social Media today. We can recreate the look and feel of your website in a cell phone compatible format that will make it much easier for your prospects and your clients to browse your website. Call 877-673-7096 x2 for more details.

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1. Social Media and Mobile Marketing
2. WordPress vs. HTML For a New Website
3. What’s better, a blog within your website or a standalone blogsite?

Strategy #5: Use Involvement Devices To Boost Conversion

Ok, today I’ll cover the topic of Call To Actions (aka CTA) and involvement devices.  Let’s first talk about involvement devices.  Robert Chaldini wrote a ground breaking book called Influence.  If you have not read it, you’ve gotta.  He talks about how to use commitment and consistency to increase response rate.

Here’s how to apply this to your blog.  Get your readers to take subtle, easy actions that have very low barriers to completion.  This is easily done with putting an entry pop on your blog.  If you are a plastic surgeon, you might put a simple pop up on your blog that says “Do you have wrinkles?”  Since most people do have wrinkles, most will answer yes.

When they answer yes, redirect them to a webform that says “Sign up for my blog and get my 7 Tips To Taking 20 Years Off The Look Of Your Face.”  The response rate can be 10%-30% higher on that webform if you ask a prequalifying easy question first like “do you have wrinkles.”

Strategy #6: Use Effective Calls To Action To Maximize Conversion

Finally, I’ll close with the topic of how to craft a good call to action.  In order for a blog reader to take a call to action (thus dramatically improve your blogs conversion rate), you’ve got to leverage the three psychological triggers of scarcity, urgency, and curiosity.

The best way to illustrate this is to show you the difference between (3) examples calls to action (CTA).  Say you own a Yoga instruction business, and you’re blogging about the health benefits of Yoga.  And you’ve got a little 15 page free report entitled “5 Ways To Improve Your Marriage By Using Yoga.

Remember you want to use your blog to build your house list.  So here are the three ways to end your blog posts:

Click here to get my free report entitled 5 Ways To Improve Your Marriage with Yoga

Click here right now to get my 5 Ways To Improve Your Marriage with Yoga

Only for the next 13 who click here immediately – get my free research report worth $27 entitled 5 Ways To Improve your Marriage With Yoga.

The first CTA is blah.  No scarcity, no urgency, barely any curiosity.  The last CTA incorporates all three.

Strategy #7: Use Google Optimizer To Test Different Calls To Action and Headlines

Bonus tip. Use the free multivariate testing tool called Google Optimizer on your blog.  It’s easy to split test placement of different calls to action to see which gets the higher conversion rate.  This topic needs about 4 blog posts dedicated to it.  If you want Matt to have me guest blog about this tool and using it in your business, leave some comments on this post to that effect.

Mike Lorence is the founder of Small Business Blackbelts – he teaches entrepreneurs how to double their cashflow in 9 months or less.  And he guarantees that. Click here immediately now to see if there are any free Business Owner Bailout Packages worth $597.39 left for you.

P. S. If you are one of the few who has not yet completed our easy survey (we’ll give you a free $47 gift for doing so), whatya waitin’ for? Go here right now and take the short survey.

Related posts:

1. 7 Ways To Double The Conversion On Your WordPress Blog – Part 3 of 4
2. 7 Ways To Double The Conversion On Your WordPress Blog – Part 1 of 4
3. 7 Ways To Double The Conversion On Your WordPress Blog – Part 2 of 4

Remember that I’ll reward you handsomely for doing so with a $47 free gift that teaches you more about social media for small business.

Getting back to the topic at hand…this next strategy is killer for conversion.

Strategy #4: Use A Valuable Free Gift As A Bait Piece For Conversion

One of my mentors, Bob Bly, taught me the concept of using a Bait Piece as a conversion tool.  Here’s how:  come up with a valuable free report or other information product that your prospects will find very valuable.  Then use that as a ‘bait piece’ to get people to respond to a call to action in a blog post.  I’ve implemented this in my business and it’s worked quite well.

Here’s how it might sound for a Laser Eye Surgeon doctor blogging about LASIK surgery:

…. That’s all for today.  If you’d like a free report worth $97 entitled The 6 Question You Absolutely Must Ask A Laser Eye Doctor Before Your Have Lasik, then go here immediately to get access.

The “go here immediately” would be a hyperlink to a landing page with a webform.  You’d collect name and email in exchange for the report.  That’s Bait Piece 101.  I’ve found that the higher the ascribed value to the bait piece, the greater the conversion.

Another example of a nail salon owner blogging about nail styles:

….. If you’ve never visited my salon before, I’ll give you a $25 gift certificate for your first visit.  Simply email me at sarah@sexynails.com and include your full name, address, and phone number.

In the first example, the call to action was clicking a link to a landing page, and filling out a webform.  The second example was a little more simple.  She used email as the direct response mechanism.

Before you complain about not having any time to creating a free research report or bait piece.  Don’t worry.  Outsource that work to a ghost writer on www.elance.com or www.guru.com for you for a nominal fee.

Next post I’ll cover several strategies that will make your readers take whatever action you want them to take.

P. S. If you’d like to apply to get me to be a guest writer on your blog or Facebook page, then send an email right now to jv@smallbusinessblackbelts.com and put “Guest Writer” in the subject line.  You must tell me how big your house list is.  I’ll entertain the first three requests that I get.

Mike Lorence is the founder of Small Business Blackbelts – he teaches entrepreneurs how to double their cashflow in 9 months or less.  And he guarantees that. Click here immediately now to see if there are any free Business Owner Bailout Packages worth $597.39 left for you.

Related posts:

1. 7 Ways To Double The Conversion On Your WordPress Blog – Part 4 of 4
2. 7 Ways To Double The Conversion On Your WordPress Blog – Part 1 of 4
3. 7 Ways To Double The Conversion On Your WordPress Blog – Part 2 of 4

Strategy #2: Get High Quality Readers From Search Engines Who Want To Convert

Recall that your blog’s conversion rate will be better if you have a higher quality reader. So the more of an affinity the reader has to you and your content, the greater their propensity to act on a call to action in a blog post.

You want to find a steady stream of new, interested readers who actually crave the content you are writing about.  To do this, we use the basic concept in the internet marketing called keyword research.

So take those Reader Personas you documented, and brain storm some broad and specific search terms that they would be typing into Google learn about your industry/niche, or about your products and services.  Then be sure to sprinkle those keywords throughout your blog posts.

(advanced tip: there’s a WordPress plug in found at www.yoast.com that allows you to see which keywords are driving the most traffic for you if you use Adwords on your blog).

This will maximize the chances of your blog posts getting found on page 1 of Google/Bing/Yahoo/MSN search engine results for those long tail keywords.  Once you get high quality traffic to your blog, you want to get their name and email in your marketing CRM software or database. But you’ve gotta compel them to read your posts. So…

Strategy #3: Use the AIDA Formula to Compel Readership and Conversion

Just about everything in business comes down to copywriting.  That’s hard for some small biz owners to swallow.  But the better you can compel, persuade, and excite with your words, the better your conversion will be on your blog and any media.

As a copywriter, I started out using the AIDA formula as a framework to write good copy.  Apply this formula to your blog posts with some tweaking

A: Attention – use a very attention grabbing headline. Examples:

How To _______________

Who Else Wants To ________________?

I Wish I Knew <fill in blank> 5 Years Ago__________

The Shocking Truth About _______________

Warning: If You Read This Blog Post You Will ___________

I: Interest – write interesting stories with your blog content. Stories about yourself, your marriage, your kids, and your trials and tribulations seem to work well.

D: Desire – offer something valuable to generate their interested to take whatever action you give them (I’m writing about this next post).
A: Action – stipulate the call to action at least one, but preferably twice in your post.

In the next post, I’ll write about a killer strategy to absolutely compel conversion that will help you rapidly grow your list from your blog.

P. S. Go here immediately to answer a few very short, painless questions about a free teleseminar.  I’ll reward you handsomely for doing so with a $47 free gift that teaches you more about social media for small business.

Mike Lorence is the founder of Small Business Blackbelts – he teaches entrepreneurs how to double their cashflow in 9 months or less.  And he guarantees that. Go here right now to learn more about Mike.

Related posts:

1. 7 Ways To Double The Conversion On Your WordPress Blog – Part 1 of 4
2. 7 Ways To Double The Conversion On Your WordPress Blog – Part 4 of 4
3. 7 Ways To Double The Conversion On Your WordPress Blog – Part 3 of 4

1. To become a trusted expert
2. For SEO purposes to improve search rankings
3. To build your list

Most understand reasons #1 and #2.  But they don’t think about #3.  The goal of all of your marketing funnels should be ultimately build you list – blog included.  The most important asset in your business is your list of names and email addresses or customers and prospects.  Then you can continually (re)market to that list with autoresponders or other media.  It’s the gold mine that never runs dry.

Since every small business owner is really in the list building business, then you’ll want to use your WordPress blog as a conversion tool to build your list.  But, few understand how to do this effectively.  So in the next few posts, I’ll be talking about the strategies you can do to actually double the conversion rate of your Word Press blog.

For starters, change your thinking about your blog.  Take the view that your blog is really a mini landing page that’s designed to build your list by using different conversion actions.

So what is a conversion action on a blog? Again, think landing page. It’s an action that the reader takes based on a clear call to action given by you in a blog post.

Here are a few examples of blog conversion actions in order of least important to most important

• Sign up for your RSS feed (least important but still valuable)
• Send you a fax to request information
• Call your office to inquire of or buy something
• Click a link that redirects to a webform to register for an ebook/webinar/teleseminar (most important and really valuable)

So here’s strategy #1: Create Blog Reader Personas Of People That Will Convert

We want more readers of our blog to take some conversion action so that we can build our list.  Here are two ways to do that:  Get new high quality readers that really care about what you write about.  Second, write better content.

I teach the concept of creating Blog Reader Personas to help accomplish both of those.  Create 4 to 6 descriptions of fake, hypothetical readers to your blog.  Just one paragraph for each will do.  For each persona, document a fake name, age, gender…What keeps them awake at night?  What make them angry?  What do they struggle with?

When you do this, you’ll get a much clearer understanding of what your blog content should be.  And your content will be ‘stickier.’  Which means that your reader will be much more willing to take whatever conversion action you put in front of them.

Next post I’ll give you two strategies to increase your WordPress blog conversions that will also produce a flood of new, high quality readers who love what you write about.

Mike Lorence is the founder of Small Business Blackbelts – he teaches entrepreneurs how to double their cashflow in 9 months or less.  And he guarantees that. Go here right now to learn more about Mike.

Related posts:

1. 7 Ways To Double The Conversion On Your WordPress Blog – Part 2 of 4
2. 7 Ways To Double The Conversion On Your WordPress Blog – Part 3 of 4
3. 7 Ways To Double The Conversion On Your WordPress Blog – Part 4 of 4

Here at Turbo Social Media we have been preaching about the greatness of WordPress for a long time. We enjoy its ease of use, the plug-ins available and  the tools it possess’ to help make your website/blog as great as it can be. We believe that WordPress has the ability to help you make your site great, and now with WordPress 3.0, it is being taken to all new levels.

Some of the new updates to WordPress range from the ease of “custom” templates and built in support, all the way to easy menu navigation control and custom link shorteners (really like this one). For a full list of all the great additions and some of the walkthroughs of these new tools, check out this blog article here.

When building a website for your company, you always want to make sure there is a nice design, it is easy to use and that you possess all the tools necessary to help your site be found on all of the search engines. WordPress gives you all of this, and with their launch of version 3.0, they make it all even easier

To learn more about Social Media Marketing, click the red button at the top of the page to watch our free video series or give us a call at 877-673-7096.

Thank You, and I encourage you to leave and comments or questions below. To learn more about the video series, Medical Professionals should click here and Entrepreneurs should click here.

Article by Zack Zucker, Manager Client Services, Turbo Social Media

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1. WordPress.com Passes 200 Million Posts
2. Does The Web Design of Your Site Affect SEO?
3. WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org: Which Is Better?

There is no simple answer to this question. Here are some things to consider…

1)      User friendliness- WordPress is a blogging platform with a fairly robust CMS. It’s an open source platform that can integrate with many different programming languages (MySQL, PHP, ASP, etc). Essentially, in WordPress, you have the ability to run a site that relies on various scripts to perform certain tasks. Updating the site content and adding pages is fairly easy to do in WordPress. Obviously, for people new to WordPress there is a bit of a learning curve, but the CMS allow you easily add new pages and blog articles without having to know HTML code. Basic HTML websites rely on the web host or FTP to update content. Updating content can be a bit trickier and more difficult to do in this instance because you’ll likely need to know how to code HTML.

Consensus: If you have a site that you never plan to update then a basic HTML site would work fine. However, WordPress is provides a better CMS and is easier to update than basic HTML pages.

2)      Security- Generally speaking, HTML sites offer a greater level of security. In most cases, it is much harder to hack a website that consists of HTML files as opposed to a CMS system like WordPress. However, WordPress has been constantly improving its security features with various plugins to protect people who use the software.

Consensus: Security can be a concern with WordPress. If you’re using WordPress make sure you have all the necessary plugins.

3)      Plug ins- WordPress has an enormous amount of plugins that can help your site run better. With one click of the button you can install these plugins and begin using them. These plugins can allow you to do just about anything with your website, including upgrade security, improve SEO, display an image gallery, list a contact form, post videos, operate ecommerce, implement analytics, and much more! Many of these tools can be replicated using HTML. However, this can only be done if they are coded properly. An arduous task to say the least!

Consensus: WordPress dominates in this category.

4)      Bandwidth and disk space- WordPress is a very powerful platform. Because of this, the platform needs a sufficient amount of bandwidth and disk space to operate. HTML websites typically take up much less bandwidth and disk space.

Consensus: Make sure your hosting provider allocates enough bandwidth and disk space for your WordPress site. While this is important, it should not be the deciding factor when choosing between HTML and WordPress. For most hosting providers you’re talking about the difference of $5-$10 a month.

5)      SEO- This is perhaps the most important element to your website (unless of course, you don’t care if anyone ever finds you). With HTML sites, optimizing your website is possible, but time consuming. Provided that you know the important elements of the site to optimize then you can accomplish the same things on an HTML website as a WordPress website. In theory, Google looks at both HTML websites and WordPress websites the same. However, WordPress websites seem to outrank HTML websites most of the time. The likely reason for this is that WordPress is a blogging platform that is designed to be SEO friendly. Search engines are looking to index new content every second, and having a blogging platform likely gives you an advantage over static HTML pages.

Consensus: Even if you have the coding skills to optimize an HTML website, the edge goes to WordPress. The key to any good SEO is adding fresh, unique content. The WordPress platform excels at this.

Conclusion: The nod goes to WordPress. While there are some security issues, as well as bandwidth and disk space concerns, it is a much more robust platform for building and maintaining your website. If you plan to incorporate a blog into your site then WordPress is a no-brainer. If you plan to add pages, videos and content, and you’re not an experienced HTML coder, then WordPress is your best bet. If you want the best platform to generate search engine rankings and traffic then WordPress is the way to go.

Experience HTML programmers may disagree because of the learning curve with WordPress. However, most people who own a website for their business are not experienced HTML programmers. Therefore, WordPress is a better option because of its user friendliness.

Related posts:

1. Blog Platform or Website: What Do I actually need?
2. WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org: Which Is Better?
3. How to Optimize Your WordPress Blog Articles

The first thing that needs to be in place when optimizing your WordPress blog is having the appropriate plugins implemented. These plugins will help you to optimize you blog later on, when you’re actually posting articles. Think of them as the foundation of your blog optimization.  Setting up widgets in your WordPress blog is also a good idea. These widgets allow you to list categories, recent articles, archives and tags on your blog, which are helpful for people searching through articles on your blog.

Once you have appropriate plugins in place then it’s time to start writing articles. As I mentioned before, it is wise to take a long tail keyword phrase approach to optimizing your articles. This approach should be used for the title of the article, as well as the title tag and the blog page name (or permalink). Another important step in optimizing your blog articles is utilizing social networking and social bookmarking. If you have a Facebook Fan page set up for your business and a Twitter account set up then you should connect your blog to them. This will keep your social networking pages fresh, with quality content and links to your blog. It is also very beneficial to manually syndicate each blog article out to different social bookmarking sites. These social bookmarking sites are essentially a collection of blogs, and they will give your articles more visibility, as well as increased back links to your blog (great for SEO).

If you don’t have a WordPress blog then you’re missing out on a crucial component to getting quality traffic to your website. However, if you have a WordPress blog, but you don’t have a strategy for posting articles then you are not getting the most out of your blog. Contact Turbo Social Media today to learn about how you can effectively optimize your WordPress blog articles.

Related posts:

1. WordPress vs. HTML For a New Website
2. WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org: Which Is Better?
3. 7 Ways To Double The Conversion On Your WordPress Blog – Part 2 of 4