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WordPress Website and Blog Intensive Training

May 18th, 2013 | Posted by martinbrossman in Blogging | WordPress Training - (0 Comments)

A WordPress Website WordPress Website & Blog Intensive Training

Whole day or three 3hr consecutive training program offered as a hand-on classroom.
Taught by Martin Brossman Developed by Martin Brossman & WordPress Expert Andrew Hill

Learn how to take control of your own website and make it easy for your customers to find you with this results driven Wordpress training. This class is supported with extensive on-line video training and resource pages developed over many years of teaching WordPress.

“WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet’s “top 1 million” websites and as of August 2011 manages 22% of all new websites. WordPress is currently the most popular blogging system in use on the Web, powering over 60 million websites worldwide.” – Wikipedia

Understanding and Setting up WordPress Websites 

  • The multiple benefits of WordPress-based websites, and how it contrasts to traditional websites
  • Understanding a blog’s purpose and use
  • Choosing and buying a website name
  • Finding the right keywords and understanding Search Engine Optimization
  • How Google finds websites and how to get Google to find yours
  • Understanding hosting for the domain, free or paid
  • Setting up the WordPress software using the 1-Click Process (avoid manual installation)

Using and Editing Your Website and Blog Widgets 

  • Understanding the WordPress dashboard (admin panel)
  • Choosing and installing a theme to customize your website and blog
  • Building the static home page and setting up the blog
  • How to add, schedule, and publish content
  • Adding audio, video and pictures to pages and blog posts
  • Using Plug-ins and Widgets to add functions and interactivity for your site visitors

Promotion: Attracting and Keeping the Right Customers 

  • How to market the site: How to drive and draw traffic to it
  • Interfacing with Social Media sites
  • Methods of generating on-going relevant content
  • Future expansion of your WordPress website

It can be taught in a classroom setting or a computer lab (hands-on) class. Participants  for the hands-on class are required to sign-up with as Google email account (gmail) in advance. 

Call Colleen Gray to schedule the class today: (919) 858-6122 – or email her.

How WordPress Powers Small Businesses Like Yours by Michelle Gower and Martin Brossman

March 14th, 2011 | Posted by martinbrossman in Blogging | Wordpress - (0 Comments)

Wordpress trainingWe get asked all the time why “we should be using WordPress for our web sites?” Many people want to get started but don’t know how, and others are tired of trying to learn HTML but want an easy way to manage their online presence.

We decided to write this short post to give you an overview.

Using WordPress to create your small business web site is a virtually guaranteed way to:

* Increase your presence in search engines
* Cut the cost of time and labor to build and maintain your web site
* Enable you or your staff to easily maintain and add to your web site with less time or hassle than Dreamweaver or FrontPage
* Add countless functionality to turn your site into a powerhouse: Sell your product, book appointments, display portfolios, increase newsletter subscribers, enable visitors to share your information on social networks, and more.

Real estate agents use WordPress to display their listings and home tours, photographers display their galleries, mom-and-pop shoppes sell their widgets with WordPress.

Over the last year, we have taken hundreds of students who chose to invest in their success from having no web site or a cheap, canned template site, or were struggling with Dreamweaver, to a full-blown, functional, Google-recognized site from the very first class. The question is, why are we teaching them to do this with WordPress rather than say, Dreamweaver, or the GoDaddy ‘website tonight’ templates?

WordPress can really put you in the driver’s seat when it comes to building and managing your web site. Currently, over 55 million people are using WordPress for their blogs and web sites, and thousands more sign up every day. Brands like People.com, Kim Kardashian, Wall Street Journal, and many more use WordPress to power their blogs and web sites. Local people are using it to, including us (Martin’s site and Michelle’s site use it). So why can’t you?

WordPress is loved by Google, and contains built-in search engine optimization to help you rank higher in the search engines. No longer do you have to create a blog at a separate provider and ‘link’ your static site to it – now the blog and site run in the same area. In fact, your WordPress web site will tell you what to blog about to capture new visitors, when it’s time to update your software, new add-ons that are available to make your site really pop — all from within an online dashboard. The software is web-based and free to use, and so versatile that you can blog or update your web site from your email or iPhone!

Use WordPress to run a job board, promote your healthcare practice, sell your latest book, book consulting appointments online, add a classified ads section, sell real estate, live stream your seminars, display your landscaping projects in easy-to-make portfolios, and more. Log in online to update and optimize it – no more calling the firm downtown to wait two weeks for a simple change, and no more having to call someone to add a new page or update old team bios on the Contact Us page. You can now do it yourself in just a few clicks. What can you do with WordPress? There is almost nothing you can’t do with it. It’s why we teach “How to Build a WordPress Website” to hundreds of students each year.

Martin & Michelle

Blogging and Websites with WordPress

December 16th, 2010 | Posted by martinbrossman in Blogging | Wordpress - (0 Comments)

 

The two key components to understand when using WordPress:

1) The “Page”: Pages are the closest to the original fixed web pages but easier to edit. This is where you post the content that does not change as often. Examples of this would be About Us, Contact, Services. Pages – and the ability to set the home address to one of them (for example, About Us)  is one of the biggest things that makes it possible to use WordPress as a web site instead of ‘just a blog.’ Here is the Home page of this site: http://www.ncsmallbusinesstraining.com

and

2) The “Post”: The “Posts area” is the “Blog” component of the WordPress website and allows you to add current content on various topics easily. This has been part of WordPress since it started, and is usually the default page you see when you set up a simple WordPress site. Here is the “Posts area” on this site. Posts can be styled numerous ways – recent first, undated, set up to look like articles.  http://www.ncsmallbusinesstraining.com/blog/

You can find Post and Page in your Dashboard (also called the Admin Panel) that can be found on by signing in to your own wordpress site by typing /wp-admin after your website address in the browser bar to get the sign-in and password.
Here is the sign-in for this site, note the URL at the top after clicking on:
http://www.ncsmallbusinesstraining.com/wp-admin/

To setup WordPress so it looks like a website with a home page instead of the blog section:

1) Sign-in to your Dashboard
2) Create two pages: one page that you want to be your home page (i.e. Home or Welcome) and a page that you want to store the blog section (i.e. Blog or Articles)
3) Go to: Settings>Reading

3a) Under “Reading Settings” see these options: Front page displays change from “Your latest posts” to “A static page (select below)”
4) Pick the page you want to be seen first as the “Home Page” from pages you already created (Home or Welcome) and then the page you want to be your “blog” from the pages you created (see step 2). Make sure to select “Save Changes”.
5) Now just look at your site and see how it looks

Getting a API Key:
For some plugins you will be requested to provide an API key on the hosted WordPress. To get that you need to sign up for a WordPress.com account if you have not already and go into the area from the Dashboard: Profile / Personal Setting then look for “Your WordPress.com API key is:” copy that numbers/letters. This link may work if you are signedin to wordpress.com:
http://dashboard.wordpress.com/wp-admin/users.php?page=grofiles-user-settings
and to directly get a API key: http://akismet.com/wordpress/

If you notice the bottom of your WordPress pages you may notice that people can post a comment. If you don’t want that to show up (most people don’t) then just go into the page from Dashboard and scroll down till you see: ”

Few Examples of WordPress Websites:

ycorpblog.com – Yahoo

www.thefordstory.com – The Ford Story

electronicsblog.sel.sony.com – Sony

www.samsungusanews.com – Samsung

www.benjerry.fr/blog – Ben and Jerry

dalesgoldbergcpa.com – CPA Company

www.gowerpower.com – Gower Power

NCSmallBusinessTraining.com – Small Business Training with Martin Brossman

www.assistantangel.com – Assistant Angel

www.elsmithconsulting.com – Consulting site

A few tips on creating Pages and Post so they can get results:

  • At the bottom of each Page and Post answer the questions: What action do I want them to take next? and make sure you state that clearly. e.g. Give use a call? How have you use (the item) in your business?
  • At the end of each Post also have a link to the home page.
  • Have a relevant picture or video on each Page and Post to make it more interesting to view and keeping them on the page longer.
  • For ever photo added make sure to include the relevant keywords so Google can index that photo in the “alternate text” area.

To contact the instructors:

Michelle Gower GowerPower.com

Martin Brossman ProNetworkingOnLine.com

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