FourTen Creative Blog

Many website projects I encounter put the cart before the proverbial horse by starting with a list of features and functionality but very little content. Content creation can be the hardest thing for business owners or leaders of non-profits because they are bogged down in the daily operations of their organization. Before you start a website, brochure or marketing project, it is wise to be clear on what your organization is all about. The goal of this article is to give you a checklist of items to have nailed down (on paper!) before creating content for your project.

In all of these items, clarity and consistency are key.

#1 Organization name - As obvious as this sounds, some organizations haven’t nailed down how they want to be referred to when it comes to a name. Does your name state what you do? Does it beg an explanation? Is it too long and convoluted? Are you better served by using an acronym? Does your usage of acronyms create more confusion? Make sure everyone on your team uses the same name in conversation and writing whenever possible and practical.

#2 Vision statement - What do you hope to accomplish through this business, church, sports team, etc.? This can be a lofty goal which serves to provide direction to your members internally and inspire or attract others externally.

#3 Mission statement - What is your organization going to do? Some confuse the mission and vision of an organization due to an overemphasis either vision or operations. The key difference is that the mission should contain a statement regarding how you will go about accomplishing the goals in the vision statement.

#4 Core values – The above items generally come about after reflection upon the core values, competencies or offerings of an organization. What you identify here may relate to a service you offer, a product you sell or an intrinsic value you hope to pass on through your organization’s operations. It is helpful to distill three or four values out of the breadth of your operations. Once you establish these values, they serve to inform both the vision and mission statements (so you might start here!).

#5 Motto – Last and definitely not least on this list is the organization’s motto or slogan. Whereas the above materials (items 2-4) may only be used internally, the motto will likely appear right after your organization name in all public communications and marketing materials. Some rules for the motto: Keep it short, it should clarify your name, it should describe your services, it should provoke a response, and it should be consistent with the items above.

Consistency and clarity are most important in forming all of these pieces that serve to identify your organization. I emphasize this because before you engage in marketing, you should have a solid identity. Otherwise things get turned around and it is tempting to let a good name, motto, logo, or gimmick lead your operations. When that happens, your brand and your organizational identity are likely to be compromised or damaged.

After successfully documenting the above items, it should be easier to engage in any web design projects, logo design, advertising or building of the organization through public communication.

If you need help with any of the above items, feel free to get in touch!

WordPress has been gaining popularity over the past couple years due to the success of WordPress.com, improvements to the software by its active development community and the proliferation of free templates and plugins which extend the functionality of WordPress from ‘blogging software’ to a robust content management system with social media smarts.

That is no news to many, but I still get people wanting to know whether it’s worth moving from their existing html/php website managed by their existing web person. My totally impartial response is, ‘heck yes!’ So I offer you 6 reasons to migrate your existing website to WordPress with a custom template.

#1 Lower your costs

The typical WordPress capable hosting package with a shared hosting provider like Bluehost.com will run you $4-$8 per month now. What are you currently paying? Just a couple years back $30/month was pretty standard and I routinely find small companies running small websites paying in excess of $100/month for hosting and ‘services’ from their host. With WordPress, many hosting providers know exactly what you need and offer excellent support if something goes wonky on you.

#2 Remove the middle-man

I realize I’m always sabotaging my business by pointing this out, but with WordPress, you don’t need to pay a ‘webmaster’ to make updates and enhancements to your website. Be the master of your own domain quite literally and you’ll likely save hundreds if not thousands of dollars each year. Learning WordPress is easy and made even easier by the proliferation of training materials online and in bookstores.

#3 Unleash your content

One of the basic features of WordPress is the blog capability. What you need to know about blog content with WordPress is that it provides a way to serialize content for distribution via RSS. What the what you say? Every blog post can be made available for re-publishing through automatic and user-controlled methods like Facebook, Twitter, (a million different bookmarking services), feed readers, email distribution methods, etc. If you are a business person, you’ll appreciate that this greatly improves your reach to new audiences with very little investment or effort.

#4 Search engines love it!

Whether you use plugins, built in template options or just WordPress’ stock permalinks options, your website will become more friendly to search engines without the multi-thousand dollar investment in an SEO professional (geez, I know how to kill my business…). WordPress allows you to control url’s, heading tags, page titles and (with plugins) meta keywords and descriptions. This makes your site more likely to be found by people performing related searches.

By the way, I blogged on SEO for WordPress here. Have a read!

#5 WordPress got social skillz

Have you seen some of the rockin plugins for Facebook and Twitter interaction lately? If not, you’re missing an opportunity to foster the development of a social community around your brand, service, or website/blog. Stronger social connection result in greater brand loyalty. If you’re  in the market to seamlessly integrate social media outlets with your website, WordPress makes it easy.

#6 The cool kids are doing it

WordPress.org reports over 3 million people have upgraded to WordPress 3.0. And think of all the people who haven’t upgraded yet! WordPress is used by such companies as Pepsi, People Magazine, UPS, Nikon, VW, Best Buy, Ford… If it’s good enough for Fortune 500 companies, I think you’ll be ok too!

So, if I’ve convinced you, why not request to migrate your site today? FourTen Creative can replicate the design of your existing site with a custom wordpress template.

You will be pleased to know that WordPress 3.0 has been released. After 6 months of development by a core of awesome volunteer coders, we have a lovely new version bringing with it notable enhancements to the default theme, menu system, post types, multi-site functionality (without wordpress MU!) and more. Read more at wordpress.org or watch the video below.

For more information about how you can leverage the latest technology in WordPress 3.0, get in touch!