When we talk about choosing the right platform in the beginning – we always recommend WordPress… But why do we love it so much?

1. It’s SOOO easy to use
We are firm believers that technology should not impede you – but make you more productive. Often times, unfortunately, this is not the case. With WordPress everything is easy. Once you’ve passed the extremely short learning curve you are ready to roll.

2. It’s already optimized
Out of the box WordPress is optimized for high quality content delivery and search engine optimization. That’s two things you won’t have to do after it is installed.

3. There’s a vast community
If there is something you want to do with your WordPress site – chances are someone else has created a plugin for it. The same goes with the WordPress theme community – there are thousands of free themes to choose from.

4. It integrates with everything
It allows you to easily integrate and use it with different services – ranging from Facebook to Twitter and everything in betweetn. Between plugins and web apps everyone has recognized the market power of WordPress and offers integration options with it.

5. There is a vast pool of developers
If you ever run into troubles with WordPress – there is a huge pool of talent out there. Often times they’ll answer your question for free if you post it on Twitter. If it’s more complicated – there are so many freelance WordPress developers out there that you can hire to help. The great thing is the freelancer won’t have to learn anything new (like they would with proprietary software) – so they can get the work done very fast…

Do you use WordPress and recommend it? Or do you use another platform? Let us know in the comments!

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Web Strategy is simply, strategic planning for your website. It’s a combination of Technology, Business and Community and how these affect your website. We focus on core aspects of Web Strategy planning, including Technology, Content, Community, Marketing, and Analysis.

Technology

Obviously the technology you choose is an extremely important part of the long term strategy planning of your website. You need to choose the right hosting, platform, analytics, plugins, etc, etc. This is something you should definitely research a lot up front. We are here to help you make the right decisions on what technologies to choose based on your specific needs.

Content

Content is, well, King. Content drives traffic and user engagement. The content you produce is a key element in your ongoing web strategy planning. Not only will content make your website engaging – it helps to increase your findability. Effective content marketing through syndication and creating content outposts is key to driving traffic – and conversions to your website.

Community

If content is king, than community is the queen. I’ve said it many times – a website is only as good as the community around it. Not only will your community visit your site – if engaged properly they will become evangelists. You should constantly be interacting with the community you build around your topic or niche – through Twitter, blog comments, FriendFeed, etc.

Marketing

Marketing is key to creating awareness and driving traffic. There are three main website marketing strategies: Internet Marketing, Content Marketing, and Social Media Marketing. This includes everything from Search Engine Marketing, PPC, AdWords, Content Outposts, Syndication, etc, etc.

Analysis

Analysis is key for optimizing your websites using analytical data from visitors to bounce rates. Analytics allows you to measure the effectiveness of your content, community, and marketing and is essential for determining the ROI of Web Strategy.

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In this Part 2 of Building a Solid Technology Foundation (listen to Part 1) for your business we talk about the importance of using analytics and creating a site structure and content conducive to findability.

We also talk Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in this episode and what you need to know as a business to optimize your website. In this discussion we talk about creating content with SEO in mind and setting up a site structure in WordPress to optimize your findability.

Show Links

• Google Analytics – free web analytics (recommended)
• Clicky Web 2.0 Analytics – advanced analytics
• WordPress – Google Analytics Plugin
• WordPress – Google Sitemap Plugin
• WordPress – All-In-One SEO Plugin
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Google Website Optimizer
• Montastic Website Monitoring
• Blog Posts: Budgeting Web Analytics & Analytics Tips

[audio:http://managingtheedge.com/podpress_trac/web/21/0/EdgeCast003.mp3]

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Episode 3 – Building a Solid Technology Foundation Part 2

Managing the Edge is an internet business podcast brought to you by Andy Brudtkuhl, Chief Web Guru and web strategist at 48Web and writer/editor at Web Strategy Workshop – and Doug Mitchell, Chief Deliverer of Results at CreateWowMedia. The podcast is recorded at Impromptu Studio in Des Moines, IA. If you like the show, be sure to subscribe to it in iTunes.

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