Smittypages.com runs on WordPress. Why?

First of all, WordPress makes publishing your own content easy. Bring your ideas to the world. Build an online presence – and an audience. The WordPress content management system (CMS) allows simple and intuitive editing, navigation control, smartly-organized page templates, and support for all types of photo, video and audio media. WordPress makes maintaining a website easier.

But beyond that, WordPress enables us all to become web publishers; to bring our ideas to the world; to build an online presence – and to significantly influence and interact with our audiences. Web publishing can build relationships.

Yes, with WordPress you can promote and sell your products and services. But presenting your ideas, displaying your creativity, your authority, your mantra, your dream team, and your ongoing spunk (balls) as you thrive in your field is also important. You need your website – and the content on it – to keep up with you, so you can keep your audience engaged.

Now, hold on. Isn’t social media how we keep engaged with our audiences? Obviously, YOU NEED TO BE ENGAGED IN SOCIAL MEDIA. But, there are all kinds of different types of social media opportunities out there, some seem to be better suited for different types of people and/or different types of organizations. But just about every one of them allows you to create a link back to your website – where you can have the eyes and ears of your audience for your opportunity to make a deeper connection.

While WordPress is a great CMS for just about any type of website, at the heart of WordPress is its ability to enable us all to become publishers of our own regular (or irregular) content. WordPress started out as a tool for writers to regularly publish their most recent ideas. One of the most powerful parts of WordPress is this ability, at its core, to very smartly display new content.

Create a blog (you don’t have to call it that!). Announce new products and events. Promote your awards. Display case studies from successful projects. Add new work to your portfolio. And then, share it with your social media channels. Start discussions with your audiences. Build relationships. Tell your story.

But that’s not it. Web publishing – particularly web publishing with WordPress – also does wonders for your search engine rankings.

As social media becomes ever more important in the algorithms used by search engines, publishing new, regular content on your website – and sharing it with Facebook, LinkedIn or any other of your strategic social media sites – produces some searchable goodness that is gobbled up by Google, BING and other search engines. Creating keyword-rich landing pages is vital to driving social media traffic to your site where you can tell your audience your story in more detail. Combine a well-configured WordPress site with consistent social media efforts (and a regular schedule of email communications while you’re at it) and you’ve got the start of a publishing hub – the perfect platform to build affinity with your audience and carve out market space for your brand.

WordPress Solutions

Smitty’s Workshop provides strategy, design, development, maintenance, hosting and content solutions to allow small to medium-sized business to build web publishing hubs that grow audiences and generate lasting relationships. Any of our WordPress Solutions allow for efficient website editing and content generation. For some of our clients we create launch, strategic and/or regular content. For others we simply hand over the keys to their site and provide the training and support that allows them to build their own web publishing hub. Depending on the client and the state-of-their-brand we play different roles. We first assess the situation then determine the best course for collaborating with the client. Any of our WordPress solutions helps to ensure that

WordPress Site Building

For some clients we simply build great, easily-edited websites. These clients might have an old-dog of a site, but they have a lot of great content and their brand is well positioned. We collaborate to create a great site, provide training to their staff and then they take it from there. If your existing site is full of great content, but you don’t have a content management system, you want to add a “blog” section, or your site needs to be made mobile-friendly , transitioning to a responsive WordPress site with our help might be just the ticket to bring you into this millennium.

+ Creative + Content

For others needing creative support in re-branding their organization or product, we work side-by-side to generate telling content and brand assets as the site is being built – ensuring the site is smartly telling their brand story. Sometimes the project involves a “tweaking” of their logo and brand assets. Sometimes this is a complete “refresh” of their brand creative. We conduct branding ideation sessions that make sense for the client and point their logo, supporting creative and language in the right direction. Fresh photography, animation, video and info-graphics can all be smartly integrated into a site to more dynamically and quickly tell your story.

+ Social Media

Obviously there are pros and cons to managing your own social media presence. Regardless of who does the work, there are real benefits in ensuring that your off-site social media content is in-sync with your on-site content. Smitty’s Workshop can provide strategic, regular or periodic social media support. Whether we are infusing social media efforts with a blast of creative energy or creating a methodic social media plan that will create connections with your audience, we use smart design practices that communicate quickly and allow for efficient re-purposing of creative across website and social media to help ensure consistent brand messaging.

+ Email Marketing

Clients who want to more-fully leverage the power of their WordPress site engage us to set up an email tool and templates that allow them to be in regular contact with their audience beyond social media sites. Event invitations, regular e-newsletters, announcements and other nuggets that engage their email lists can link back to fresh pages on their WordPress site. We can train your staff to create great emails. Or, allow us to work with you to create regular emails content that will really engage your audience.

+ Publishing Apprentices

Getting a new website up and running, chock full of rich & telling content is a great first step. Keeping your audience engaged and interested in what you have to offer is another. Smitty’s Workshop Publishing Apprentices can be hired per project or on retainer to serve as your right-hand marketing assistant. Equal parts designer, writer and project & social media community manager, our Publishing Apprentices are intuitive communication dynamos working both remotely and on-site depending on the client. Trained in the needed publishing software and on-top of the latest social media and online advertising trends, a Smitty’s Workshop Publishing Apprentice will most-likely end up becoming an indispensable member of your team.

Get Started

Getting things rolling and finding a WordPress solution that fits best is a straight-forward process. First we talk. Actually, we hope you do most of the talking. We’ll be listening to gather a few key bits of information:

• How comfortable are you and your team with creative, writing, technology and WordPress in general?
• Do you already have a web/marketing specialist?
• Do you need training? Do you want to manage your site yourself?
• How in-tune are you and your team with your brand?
• Does your existing brand creative accurately capture your spirit and your story?
• Does your brand creative need a refresh in the process?
• Do you need ongoing creative and/or content support?
• What goals do you hope to accomplish in the work?
• What is your budget and your expectation of what can be accomplished?