Wordpress is Perfect!

 For anyone that’s in need of a website and doesn’t have the big bucks to get a web designer for a fancy website, Wordpress is perfect for you. Wordpress is very easy to use and highly customizable. If you’re indecisive like I can be at times, you’ll love the fact that you can adjust the theme or the outward appearance of the website.

The theme controls everything including the colors of the words, the fonts they are in, the width of your content columns, the page background, the header, the spacing between letters, and much more. To make it simple, it controls the overview of your site and it helps convey your brand to an audience. When choosing a theme, pick a scheme that relates to your industry, niche or business. Keep things simple and try to avoid make the pages too busy.

There are several sites you can browse for free theses and the even more that you can purchase. Most theme sites will give you the option to preview a demonstration of the theme before you actually download or purchase it. It’s basically a live example of what the website will look like. You can navigate through it just as if it already belonged to you.

The process of acquiring a Wordpress theme is fairly easy. Once you get your theme, you just need to install it. Although, if you purchase a theme, they sometimes have custom instructions to follow. I will say that themes can be a bit technical to customize, and this is not a lesson on doing that, so if you need help, please find a professional service to help you. There are several sites on the web that can help build and customize Wordpress themes at a reasonable price.  

Free Themes:

Wordpress’s own directory of themes (http://www.wordpress.org/extend/themes/)

Premium Themes:
ThemeForest.net (http://bit.ly/7te9pZ)

Tips On Branding Just For You

According to the Free Dictionary, a brand is a trademark or distinctive name identifying a product or a manufacturer.  I’m going to provide you with a few tips on how to use social media to build your brand. The first step would be deciding if you would like to promote yourself or stay away from the limelight and focus on your product or service.  Either way you put it, the most important part of ‘social media’ is to be social.

When using your personal brand, it’s a good idea to use your name as the domain name, all social urls, twitter name and a nice headshot of you as your avatar. This will help build your online credibility.  For a corporate brand, it’s understandable that there are people that are not interested in being known as a personality and therefore will concentrate their branding efforts on their product or services only. In this case, your domain name, social urls, and twitter name should incorporate the business name or whatever it is you’re promoting. A logo would be more suitable than your personal photo of your own headshot. You should be mindful that sometimes people are less likely to engage on social networks like twitter with a logo, especially when the company or brand is not really known.

There are thousands of ways to brand yourself and I’ve only provided a few to keep it short and simple. Try applying these basic skills to your business now, you will see how easy they are and all the unique and creative things you can do with them as you build your online presence.

Dan Schawbel is the definitive resource for personal branding. 
He is a featured contributor on Mashable.com & you’ll definitely want to read his article Personal Branding 101: How to Discover and Create Your Brand (http://mashable.com/2009/02/05/personal-branding-101/) & Personal Branding 102: How to Communicate and Maintain Your Brand (http://mashable.com/2009/02/12/personal-branding-102/) before you get started.