Foundation of Internet Marketing and How to Build Your Online Presence Using A CMS

Lesson #31–FOUNDATION LAID:
BUILDING BEGINS

This is internet income course lesson thirty-one, to simplify the challenges of starting and running a profitable online business by breaking down important principles in simple English. Course author, George Little, continues to give tips, real-world advice, and in-depth, step-by-step instructions on setting up an Internet-based business. Read the previous lesson 30 here.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
In this lesson, we will review what has been covered in the Revised Internet Income Course to date and lay out the path we will follow for the future.

Review

In Lesson 1, we learned that the Internet continues to have great potential for energetic entrepreneurs. In Lesson 2, we covered how to avoid spamming and related offenses. In Lesson 3, we learned to follow the flow of Internet traffic and highlighted the rising importance of social media. We also introduced the five goals of effective traffic building:

1. utilizing effective branding,
2. obtaining good publicity, including links to your site from popular pages,
3. obtaining an effective search engine presence,
4. utilizing and maintaining flow in the placement of your Internet ads, and
5. maintaining an effective social media presence.

From there through Lesson 30, we have introduced you to the general principles, tools, and strategies you need for Internet marketing, which lays a solid foundation for moving forward. If you haven't already read the first 30 lessons, please schedule some time to do so. If you have read them, please refer back to them anytime you become confused or lose your focus. A return to the basics can get you back on track.

As a helpful shorthand reference for the future, let's abbreviate the five ways to build Internet traffic as follows:

1. Branding
2. Promotion
3. SEO
4. Flow
5. Social Media

Hopefully, we have done an adequate job covering the whys of Internet Marketing in the first 30 lessons so we can now drill down into some of the how-to's of Internet Marketing in more detail. Our abbreviations of the Five Ways to Build Traffic will make it easier to refer back to these concepts as we move forward.

Choosing A Content Management System

If you are not already set up with a Website, the first task you face is choosing a content management system.

Content Management Systems (CMS) are software applications or sets of related applications that are used to create and manage digital content, typically used for enterprise content management and web content management. In other words, they provide an easy way to create and manage a Website without having to know HTML, CSS, JavaScript, php, mysql, or any of the many other Web development programs. As it is no longer practical for the average Website owner to rely upon a paid web developer to build their site and manage the content on the site, most Websites are now maintained with content management systems. The Website owner either hires a web developer to build the site within a content management system or just builds the site within the system themselves. Either way, unless you're a large organization, it has become essential to be able to add your own content in real time rather than relying on a third party contractor to add it for you.

I have chosen to focus future lessons on the WordPress CMS. You may already be using another CMS or choose another CMS to get started because you feel it better meets your needs. You should still follow–and there is still much you can learn–from our future lessons even if you use another CMS.

At The Time Of This Writing

If you've read many past lessons, you've heard me say "at the time of this writing" many times throughout this course and the previous course. That's because whenever one is discussing Internet how-to's in any detail, what you are discussing may well be changed in the near future.

Thus, obsolescence is one of the problems we will encounter in our future lessons. At the level of attention to detail we will reach, many of the specifics may change almost as quickly as we can document them. Nevertheless, there is no choice but to start with what works today–even though it may be a bit outdated tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year.

Another problem is that there are so many options now at every step in the process, it is impossible to cover them all. Future choices along the way of building and maintaining your Website depend upon previous choices that you made.

To minimize these problem as much as possible, we will choose the most tried and true, commonly used options and methods–what works for the majority of people. We will do the best we can. Just please remember that all of the procedures we discuss may change with time and will depend upon a number of choices made along the way. We will try to point out, in general terms, how these same processes may be applied with other setups and circumstances.

WordPress

When it comes to tried and proven, WordPress can't be beat. It's been around for 13 years. WordPress currently powers approximately 26.5% of the Web. It is by far the most commonly used content management system. There are 500 new sites created in WordPress every day. It is available in 56 languages and growing. Thus, when it comes to choosing a content management system to discuss, WordPress is the natural choice.

While WordPress is by far the most common, it is certainly not the only choice for building your Website. If you use another Website builder or content management system like Blogger or any other, these lessons will still be helpful to you because, due to its popularity and ease of use, WordPress is now being incorporated into many new systems and often used to extend existing systems. Some knowledge of WordPress is important to anyone involved in web publishing. In any case, it provides us a context within which to discuss details and strategies that will also apply to other types of content management systems as well.

Where We're Headed

Starting with our next lesson, we will start at the beginning, taking the approach of someone creating their first Website. We will discuss setting up WordPress, choosing a theme, adding the needed plugins, and branding your site. Then, we will move to creating the initial content for your site. After the site is created, we will discuss setting up a Facebook brand page and a Twitter account. During this process we will often refer to the Traffic Building Strategies we have previously discussed.

Then, we will discuss creating content that speaks to your target market, monitoring your results, and forming specific campaigns.

CONCLUSION
With a foundation of the general principles involved in Internet marketing from our first 30 lessons, we can now begin to focus on details. We will start at the beginning and show you how to set up a Website, build content for your Website, and bring traffic to your site. Due to its wide popularity and proven track record, we will use WordPress as the Content Management System (CMS) for our future discussions. We will often refer back to the Five Ways to Build Traffic discussed in the first thirty lessons of this course.

WHAT'S COMING NEXT
In our next lesson, we will discuss obtaining a hosting service and installing Wordpress on your site. Read the next lesson: Choosing a Host and Getting Started. And you may also browse through the Internet Income training Index.

Author
By George Little, Panhandle On-Line, Inc. For more information on the Internet Income Course and other works and courses by George Little, see http://www.profitpropulsion.com