Using WordPress collectively

Roles and Capabilities « WordPress Codex

Suppose you have 30 sales people in your company- and they are constantly sharing information they find on the web with the other sales people- via e-mail.

A sales person might send an e-mail to his peers:

Our competitor is bragging about their 6 million hits on their website monthly at site xyz- our web site has 6 million unique visitors- with way more hits. Go tell that to all the clients who are considering advertising on their site.

Instead- he could post it on his WordPress driven site- for all to see- with comparisons. Depending on his level- he could have different abilities to post:

  • Administrator – Somebody who has access to all the administration features
  • Editor – Somebody who can publish posts, manage posts as well as manage other people’s posts, etc.
  • Author – Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts
  • Contributor – Somebody who can write and manage their posts but not publish posts
  • Subscriber – Somebody who can read comments/comment/receive newsletters, etc.

If the sales manager wants to keep control of what his sales people post- or let legal take a look- he can make them all Contributors– and make the lawyers Editors.

The great thing about letting everyone post- is content drives visitors and higher search results- so a small company of 30, posting often can create a high ranked site in a short period of time. The key will be making sure the posts are all properly categorized- and that everyone makes a good effort not to duplicate content.

Copyrights must also be observed- making sure that all content is properly attributed.

It never hurts to also hire an “editor” to try to make different writing styles all fall into one corporate voice. Look to hire a freelance writer- who is familiar with WordPress to help keep your site as grammatically correct as possible.

If you are looking for an editor- we can connect you with a few (it might be good if we hired one of them too- note to self).

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A Realtor making the best of blogs

Columbus Best Blog

Maureen McCabe may not be the best Realtor in Columbus- but she’s got the right idea when it comes to getting to the top of search- and building a community around her.

It seems so many Realtors are ready to spend a ton of money advertising in throw away classifieds section- when the web is global, pretty much eternal, and allows you to write as much about your listings- or your expertise- with no additional cost.

The real estate listings in the newspaper are typically nothing more than price and product ads- with a grocery list of “features” attached. Considering a home is the biggest investment most people make, it seems sad that this is the best that Realtors can do.

So- if you are shopping for a Realtor to sell your home- start asking them about how they plan to market your house online- who is in their “Network” – and how big their audience is? If they can’t tell you about the key search terms to their site (not the corporate parent)- or the number of unique visitors (not hits) and show you who links to their site- move on. These are the keys to having a successful web site- and unfortunately, most Realtors still don’t get it.

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Proof that this works.

On Tuesday, we had a full day of seminars. Intro Blogosopher in the morning, and the first WordPress advanced in the afternoon. To showcase the power of categories in WordPress to gather ideas in several posts into a super post- I searched The Next Wave news blog for anything about the super hot agency “Crispin Porter + Bogusky” in Miami and created a new category of the same name.

Google search for Crispin Porter + BoguskyWe searched Google for any mention of The Next Wave when searching for “Crispin Porter Bogusky” and gave up after the 300 th or so reference (30 pages in). Today I added a post about “CB+P” to the site- and then went to Google again a few hours later. We were now number 7! And that is out of 176,000 results. A few articles above ours, was a great article about CP+B from Business Week– so we used the “Press-it” function of WordPress to add yet another post to the site.

The goal is to get to the top of Google, using real content, instead of nested pages, or paid postion, to be next to the hottest ad agency in the world. Of course, we think we’re the second hottest agency- along with half the agencies in America- but the difference is- we’ve figured out the secrets of search- and content management- and even Crispin hasn’t got that part quite mastered.

If you want to learn how to get your site, and yes, we’ll even teach other ad agencies, to the top of Google- without paying for it, you need to attend one of our seminars.

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