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Building a website can be a daunting task if it’s not in your arsenal of fluent skill sets; not knowing where to start or how to represent your brand at its full potential can be overwhelming. Luckily, there are software programs out there to help you get started known as Content Management System, or CMS. One that tops most any Google search when looking for the best CMS is WordPress.

WordPress began in 2003 and as it reaches its 18th year, it is still one of the top CMS platforms out there today. This success is largely attributed to the commitment of its creators, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, pushing consistent updates to maintain the software’s unique and flexible features year after year.

A few quick facts about WordPress before we dive into WHY it is the best (you can find these and more at Kinsta)

• Over 500 websites are built using WordPress every day.
• WordPress now powers around 30-40% of the internet.
• It’s used on 14.7% of the internet’s top websites.
• WordPress has a 60.8% market share of the CMS market.
• There are over 55,000 plugins on the WordPress Directory with options being     added every day.

So what makes WordPress the best CMS platform? We’ve outlined some of the highlights of WordPress below.

Top 3 Reasons of Why WordPress is the Best CMS Platform

1. It’s User Friendly

WordPress is organized in such a way that it is clear and sensible for both experienced developers and beginners. Its clean interface is not only powerful, but also easy to use with little to no coding expertise needed. The unique features of the platform give users the ability to create and maintain scalable designs with minimal effort. Many CMS platforms still require years of developer experience to utilize, but that’s just not the case with WordPress, it is great for beginners. It’s used by a variety of organizations, from individuals to large scale corporations to small not-for-profit charities, and you can even create your own eCommerce stores form an easy to use, versatile platform.

2. It’s Free

Since it began in 2003, WordPress has been completely free. From download to unhinged use of all its awesome features, it’s 100% free. Although hosting and domain name(s) will play into the cost of your actual website, the builder is at no cost to you.  The platform comes with over 200 free themes that anyone can use, all completely flexible and customizable including fonts and color schemes.

Between quality and price I could stop there, but I digress.

3. It’s Easy on the SEO

Any business out there today with a digital presence understands the importance of SEO. Whether we fully understand how SEO works, we do know it plays a vital role in our website being seen. WordPress has a 99% approval rating for SEO friendliness as reported by Google. WordPress has plugins tools specific for SEO to get a website ahead of its competitors. In addition to the SEO tools, it features image alt tags, meta tags, URLs and more to boost SEO performance from the beginning.

WordPress and SEO truly go hand in hand. You can modify everything you would need to boost SEO right out of the gate – meta tags, title tags, image alt tags, and URLs. And this is before you add any plugins!

When potential customers or clients begin to research a company the first thing they go to is the company’s website. People want to see and learn about a company from their website more than their social media pages. Why? Because while Social media can give good insight of what a company provides, a website gives so much more information than Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter can. More important than just having a website, is having a great website.

In real life the team of a company is the face of a business, but websites are the online form of that “face”. A strongly built website will get you ahead of your competitors. Providing an informative homepage to really catch the eye of your target market can strongly boost business and brand awareness. If your website is mediocre, or worse, you don’t have a website, then your online presence is heavily slacking, causing you to miss out on potential business. The level of work ethic  you have for your business should equate to your online presence and the content of your website should display the quality of your brand.

We think of websites as part of the foundation of a business. Without a strong foundation you will have severe complications from the beginning. For general marketing purposes your website has to be strong, informative, and captivating; otherwise you aren’t going to get the attention of your target audience. Marketing your website goes beyond owning a website. Keeping your blog updated weekly or even bi-weekly will help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Having a client-focused website will help with engagement, SEO and the generation of new traffic and leads. Take our homepage for example, we list what we do and what we don’t do to help answer questions potential clients may have up front. We have blog posts, a contact us page, and more to develop engagement within our website. Adding blog posts, videos, or other content that engage with the customer to add value to their experience with your company can increase engagement tremendously.

Possessing a strongly built website that connects with your target audience will drive business more than a poorly designed website that gives vague details. A company’s website should also reflect the amount of care they have for their clients. If your website provides captivating content, quality information, and is focused on satisfying your target market, then your online presence will reflect the face of your business.

The Google Algorithms update that began in June this year will make tracking website performance better, and easier, for website owners. The new update will create a better understanding of content performance with great new insights. The new Core Web Vitals help to enhance a user’s experience, and thus can increase your page’s overall UX(user experience). The Core Web Vitals are:

• Largest Contentful Paint
• First Input Delay
• Cumulative Layout Shift.

Largest Contentful Paint (or LCP) is the first Core Web Vital. LCP measures how long it takes for the main content of a page to load and be ready to interact with.The largest main piece of page content, for example, could be a listing page on a Real Estate brokerage’s page. LCP would measure how fast or slow the listing page loads on the website. LCP adds up to 25% of your Google Performance Score, and needs to load in under 2.5 seconds to pass the Core Web Vitals assessment. There are ways to improve your site’s LCP to be sure to pass the Core Web Vitals assessment:

• Remove large page elements, your Google PageSpeed Insights will determine if this is a factor in the diagnostics portion.
• Setting up lazy loading can improve your speed since it makes it where images only load when scrolling down the page.
• Remove any unnecessary third-party scripts, Backlinko did a study and found that third-party scripts can slow down a page by 34 milliseconds.

First Input Delay (or FID) measures how long it takes for a user to interact with your website. A few interactions could include changing which page you are on from a drop down menu, clicking on a navigation bar, or entering an email address into a field. Making sure your website has a quick reaction time to these items will lead to passing the Core Web Vitals assessment.  There are a few ways to improve your website’s FID score:

• Minimize JavaScript since it’s nearly out of the question to use a page while the browser is loading JavaScript.
• Remove any third-party scripts. Similar to LCP, removing any non-critical third-party scripts can boost your website speed.
• Using a browser cache can help content load faster and can even help a user’s browser move swiftly through JavaScript tasks.

To pass the FID’s Core Web Vitals assessment, your web page needs to have a response time of under 100 milliseconds. Like LCP, it also accounts for 25% of your Google Performance Score. FID is along the same lines of speed as LCP, but rather than just measuring page speed, it measures how long it takes users to interact on your website.

Cumulative Layout Shift (or CLS) is the visual stability of a page. If you have a high number of elements moving on your page, then the CLS will be too high to keep up stability. We have all had a time where a mobile page is loading, we go to click on a link, and the page moves. This leads to us clicking on something we weren’t aiming to click on. This helps determine if a page has bad CLS. To pass a Core Web Vitals assessment, your web page needs to register a score under .1 and it also accounts for 5% of your Google Performance Score.

The rollout began June 16th  2021 with a second update in July and the full Core Update is projected to complete sometime in August. The Core Updates are quality updates intended to help websites with high-quality relevant content. Next in line will be a Spam Update, mainly to make the search safe for users. Users and website owners should start seeing changes in their website analytics and browsing soon. Beast is excited about the updates to make user experience as well as client’s experiences on their websites the best they can be.

Savvy business owners and marketers understand the importance of tracking the ROI. Digital has made this calculation even easier with tools like automated conversion tracking and integrated marketing. But in addition to traditional ROI, there is another metric organizations should track: ROC, or Return on Community, a measure of how many members of a digital audience are converted into customers, brand advocates, donors, and supporters.

You can’t track what you don’t know

To measure a Return on Community, you first need to know the individuals that make up your digital community. Your followers are real people searching for recognition, value, and a genuine connection. Are they getting that from their interactions with your brand? To begin cultivating a relationship with them, take the time to get to know them and their motivations.

To that end, engagements with digital community members should be monitored and tracked. In sales, a quality CRM goes a long way to ensure you never miss a lead or follow up. Similarly, organizations that track their digital audience members in a digital CRM unlock a multitude of new opportunities to engage with and, eventually, convert followers into new customers and supporters.

Social media should move at a conversational pace

Before we can turn followers into customers and supporters, we have to get them to engage. First impressions matter, but so does every subsequent impression. On top of publishing relevant content that motivates followers to click the like button, leave a comment, or share the post, brands should work to impress a real sense of community people are eager to become part of.

71% of consumers who have had a positive experience with a brand on social media are likely to recommend that brand to their friends and family members. While a significant finding, having a truly positive experience with a brand online is rare. Often, brand accounts are one-way operations: Content gets posted, followers interact, and then nothing else happens.

That’s not a positive experience. In fact, it’s not really an experience at all. Cultivating a digital community requires treating followers online like you would a valued customer in-person. Ask yourself, how do they feel after interacting with us?

If a comment isn’t responded to in real-time, you’re missing an opportunity to establish a new, genuine connection. If a website-generated lead goes unanswered, that potential sale is lost. And if a message, DM, or email gets left on read, there’s a user on the other side feeling inspired to take their business elsewhere.

If social media is supposed to be social, then why do so many brands fail to keep the conversation going? The only way to ensure a strong Return on Community is to be engaged in your digital community, responding to comments, striking up conversations, providing real value, cultivating meaningful relationships, and building a community that contributes directly to your organization’s goals. At the end of the day, your efforts to build a digital community should yield tangible results.

Executive Summary

A significant change to the News Feed algorithm means content published on Facebook is less likely to be seen by your followers. Facebook puts the impact bluntly: “As we make these updates, Pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease.”

Response

1. Boosting posts is a cost-effective way to ensure distribution to your Facebook audience, and campaign teams should operate with a pre-approved monthly budget to draw on.
2. Investing in Like advertising — spending to increase the size of your Facebook audience — may not be as cost-effective moving forward.
3. The most valuable channel for building and reaching an audience is email, and budgets should be allocated accordingly.

Discussion

It was only a matter of time: Facebook announced a sweeping overhaul of its News Feed algorithm. Introduced as an innocuous “FYI”, some are going so far as to call it a “nuclear bomb” for publishers.

Between Russians’ use of Facebook to influence U.S. voters and a rash of articles linking Facebook use to depression, the decision has been made to prioritize content from friends at the expense of publishers, brands, and politicians.

Previously, Facebook’s News Feed algorithm optimized for fast engagement: a post receiving many likes, comments, and shares in a short time was a strong signal to Facebook that the post should be rocketed to the top of News Feeds. Doing so created a virtuous cycle of engagement as ever-greater users saw the content and reacted.

The News Feed is the Facebook homepage, where people like, comment on, and share content from friends and brands.

Not all content published on a page is seen by the people who follow a page. Instead, an algorithm determines what appears on this precious News Feed real estate.

If posts you publish do not appear in a user’s News Feed, they are unlikely to be seen at all.

The side effect is obvious to anyone who has spent time on the platform: posts that are intellectual junk food, particularly those sparking rage or anxiety, were the winners in this system.

Now, Facebook is prioritizing long-term engagement, especially on content shared by connections closest to its users like family and friends. Thought-provoking conversations, helpful assists to those seeking advice, and more aspirational posts are the new winners.

Publishers are hardest hit by these changes. Expect to see a lot more paid (“Boosted”) content in your News Feed from publishers driving traffic to important stories

In addition to publishers, those who are not investing in their email lists are hurt by this change. Quartz, a business and lifestyle publisher targeted at the WSJ-reading audience, indicated their most valuable traffic source is email: “The inbox is ‘the new homepage for executives,’ said Katie Weber, VP of Client Partnerships for Quartz.” Similarly, campaigns and causes should view the inbox as the homepage for voters and the public.

“When the history of Facebook is written, mark down March 14th, 2019 as the end of the News Feed era.”

What do we do when the News Feed is no longer the keystone of the Facebook experience? Understand that advertising space on Facebook is about to become even more of a premium, evolve our strategy, and be prepared for more active and frequent optimizations as we measure the impact of new designs.

Mark Zuckerberg recently rolled out, in true Zuckerbergian style, plans for redesigning America’s largest social media platform.

Since 2016, Facebook has been dealing with privacy issues that have proven increasingly embarrassing (and costly — to the tune of $3 billion most recently) for their company. That fact has caused Zuckerberg to take the company into a more private direction.

“As I think about the future of the internet, I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today’s open platforms.” Zuckerberg wrote in one of his now infamous 3000+ word blog posts.

Based on the fact that 400 million users are apart of one group or more, Zuckerberg is looking to step away from the traditional News Feed and direct users to their redesigned Groups and Events tabs.

Along with a drastic change in direction, one of the News Feeds original designers, Chris Cox, has decided to leave the company.

Cox spent more than a decade working at Facebook and was the primary overseer of the News Feed during its halcyon days. Cox stepping down could be a sign of the beginning of the end for the News Feed.

So what happens to the world’s largest online town hall? And more importantly, the billions of dollars Facebook is paid for their primary data-harvesting tool?

Nothing…. nothing at all.

But that raises a concern for campaigns and associations. Where does the content go after you’ve taken away the site’s largest billboard?

Facebook has already begun to introduce new ways to purchase ad space. Self-service premium ads, sponsored stories, and automated “premium” ad buys will help make for a smooth transition away from the News Feed.

And possibly more expensive real estate?

With a more private social platform that focuses more on the likes and dislikes of the individual rather than a “the more the merrier” mindset, ad space will become more exclusive — and more valuable.

With advertising driving 89% of the companies revenue, rest assured very little has fundamentally changed at Facebook.