Content Marketing Today

Yes, You Can Create a Free Business Website in 20 Minutes or Less!

I spoke earlier this week to a business person who is launching an executive coaching practice.  As I was explaining to her how important it is to establish a comprehensive web presence, I realized that the idea seemed very intimidating to her. 

So, to prove to myself that it did not need to be intimidating, I set about creating a very rough prototype website, using WordPress, to see how long it would take.  From start to finish it actually took about 19 1/2 minutes.

I know what you’re thinking, “You do this all the time so how hard could it be for you?”

Fair enough.  I can probably do it faster than somebody who has no experience with WordPress.  But, it is also true that even an absolute neophyte can launch a basic blog-powered website in a matter of hours rather than days or weeks.  What would have taken a professional software developer with HTML coding experience days or perhaps weeks to accomplish 10 years ago can now be accomplished in a fraction of that time.  And what would have cost perhaps $50-$100000 or more can be achieved anywhere from free to $5,000 plus.

Here’s what you can do in 20 minutes or less.

If you lack an online presence or are deeply dissatisfied with what you have, here are the basic steps to building a blog powered website in record time.

1. Go to WordPress.com. 
2. Sign up for a blog account that will enable you to set up as many blog powered websites as you wish for free.
3. Give your blog a name–something like executivecoaching.WordPress.com might do.
4. Using the intuitive WordPress dashboard, select a theme that appeals to you and to the visitors you expect to attract.  There are plenty of choices, including many that enable you to upload your own custom graphic easily.
5. For our prototype, we uploaded a business related photo that represented the idea of successful coaching outcomes.
6. Choose basic sections for your site by creating pages.  These might include pages that will inform your visitors about you and about how you can help them solve their problems. In the case of our hypothetical coaching site, we chose: optimizing business results, optimizing your performance, about us, media room, contact us. These pages form the basic navigational structure shown on a horizontal navigation bar in the template we chose.
7. You then choose categories that represent the most critical components of what you do from the perspective of your potential customers. For our prototype, we simply put in two: business coaching and establishing goals.
8. You then began filling in content that will help your visitors see you as a trusted source of products or services that will help them achieve personal or professional success. we added a bit of content just to show how much you could posts in just a few minutes. If you have an existing site, you can probably cut and paste virtually all of your existing content quickly and easily.

Steps one through eight took just under 20 minutes. 

I know that I’m oversimplifying and minimizing the serious thought that needs to go into the structure and nature of the content that you will include on your website.  But it’s also true that too many people overcomplicate the creation of effective business websites.

Can you have a complete web solution in 20 minutes or less?  No. But you can certainly establish a solid framework into which you can pour content with an effort of hours rather than days.

If you’d like to take a look at what I built, go here to see The Online Coaching Connection.  It’s not complete by any means and is not full of content.  But it will give you a pretty good idea of how far you can get in a third of an hour.

Creating the website is easy.  Developing the content marketing strategy is more challenging.

Of course, it’s essential that you think through a comprehensive content marketing strategy that will underlie everything you do online, in print, and in person. But that needs to happen no matter how you choose to build out your website.

I’m guessing that you would never have thought that it would be easier to get yourself online with a functional website than it would be to develop an effective content marketing strategy.  When it comes to the latter, you’ll find plenty of resources here on contentmarketingtoday.com. You will need to do some pretty serious brainstorming and strategizing to come up with a content marketing  plan  that works.  But once you do, it is now amazingly easy to transfer that strategy into an online web presence.

The best part about using WordPress as your foundation is that you can do it for free, on your own time, and with plenty of help available from the growing number of web professionals who specialize in WordPress Web solutions.

If you have a solid marketing plan in place but still lack a website, you no longer have an excuse.  It has never been easier or faster or cheaper to create an effective online presence.  Will your first effort be perfect?  Almost certainly not.  But, by using WordPress or similar tools, you can keep improving it and fine-tuning it until it becomes your most powerful marketing weapon.

Got 20 minutes?  Why don’t you go to WordPress.com and see what you can accomplish! You may surprise yourself.