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As far back as 1996, Bill Gates stated that the Internet would evolve into a “marketplace of content”. This prediction has indeed come to pass, as content is now considered to be “king” in the world of CRM and marketing in general.

You are already aware that presentation is the key to success. Whether referring to blogs, white papers or the average product update, client engagement is key. Fully developed strategies to implement, collate and present this content are now critical to the success of any business. WordPress has become one of the cornerstones of this industry. What aspects of this turnkey software allows it to be the choice of countless companies?

The Intuitive Edge

Were you aware that no less than 55 percent of the top million most-visited portals in the world employ WordPress as their CMS provider of choice? This largely arises from the fact that WordPress is highly intuitive. In other words, you need to know very little in regards to coding to create a great online presence. From user-friendly dashboards to preview pages to make certain that your page presents correctly, the user-friendly nature of this system cannot be denied. If you are able to edit text within a standard Word document, you will have little trouble adapting to WordPress.

The Power of the Open-Source Force

Another massive advantage of WordPress is that it is an open source. You will not have to pay one cent in order to utilize all of its tools and benefits. This is in direct contrast to other systems which require monthly installments in order to access benefits. Free products and services are attractive; particularly those which are as effective and easy to work with as WordPress.

Multifaceted Multimedia

In the past, embedding videos, GIFs and other widgets into a website were difficult without having a great deal of experience with coding. This frustration has been done away with thanks to the streamlined presentation that WordPress offers. Importing videos, images and graphics has never been easier. As we all know, embedded visual aids can make all the difference between an interested visitor and a high website bounce rate. The built-in tools provided by self-hosted WordPress have made it very simple to design a high functionality, and visually compelling website without very little technical knowledge or experience.

The Mobile-Responsive Edge

It is no secret that modern websites need to be mobile responsive in order to reach the most users possible. This can be difficult to address with in-house systems and if the mobile demographic is not reached, a great deal of business will naturally be lost. WordPress offers a number of turn-key themes which can be quickly integrated into your existing website architecture. This alone can dramatically boost a website’s natural ranking in the search engines, and thus a site’s daily visitor numbers.

Community Help

The open-source nature of WordPress enables you to find help when you need it the most. While most features are easy to use, there will inevitably be times when questions need to be asked. Thanks to a robust online community, help is never far off. This is in direct contrast to other CMS systems which usually provide a much more limited range of community support and creative solutions. With WordPress, there is a solution for nearly anything that you want to accomplish with your website, and if it doesn’t exist yet, you could easily have a coder create it for you on third-party sites such as Fivver or Upwork.

WordPress is here to stay. As a continuously growing number of websites are building their online presence with WordPress, it only stands to reason that its marketing value for online businesses will continue to grow. It will be very interesting to see how WordPress evolves as the needs of the modern business likewise advance, but rest assured they will meet tomorrow’s challenges and opportunities just as they have been doing since 2003.

Once there was a king who wanted to bathe in a giant swimming pool of milk rather than water… He had heard it was great for your skin, but it was too large a task to do alone.

He first told some of his workers to dig a pond. Once the pond was dug, the king made an announcement to his people saying that one person from each household had to bring a glass of milk during the night and pour it into the pond. So, in his estimations, the pond should be full of milk by the morning.

After receiving the order, everyone went home. One man prepared to take the milk during the night but milk was very rare in this town and he wanted to keep it. He thought that since everyone would bring milk, he could just use a glass of water and pour it inside the pond instead. Surely, because it would be dark at night, no one would even notice. So he quickly went and poured the water in the pond and came back happy.

In the morning, the king came to visit the pond and to his anger, the pond was only filled with pure water! What happened was that everyone was thinking the same thoughts as the other man that “I don’t have to put the milk, someone else will do it.”

When it comes to business help, do not think that others will take care of it all for you. I’m not saying not to accept help where you can get it. Help is important, but remember that it starts with you. If you don’t do things for yourself or at least oversee them, no one else will do it and if they do, you can’t complain that they did it wrong because you used something or someone outside of yourself to make it work.

There are only so many experts, workers, software, systems etc. that you can use to get ahead, all that will come later when you are rolling in your fortune. Meanwhile, if you want quality, get your hands dirty, do the learning, do the work and feel genuinely rewarded from it. This will avoid mistakes caused by others, it will encourage you to take responsibility and it will give you a sense of achievement.

If you have many automatic processes working for you and they are performing well, that’s great. But if there is anywhere in your life that you can step in and say – “Can I do more here? What can I do today that I didn’t bother with yesterday? What extra mile of work can I put in just for now?” Then every day will have purpose and every moment will feel in your control.

Life and business is all about what YOU put into it, so be sure you are doing everything you can every single day to actualize your full potential. Yes, leverage the help of others along the way when needed to improve efficiency, but never fully rely on others. Your life is what you make it, so make it ALL that it can be!

Many people think that they need to have all the answers to be successful in any capacity; business wise or in life. While we all require some knowledge, there are some people in the world that have made it without.

That is, without qualifications, studying, school or even full expert knowledge of the field they want to be in. In fact, the majority of the world’s richest people know that they don’t need to have all the answers in order to gain success, and what’s more, they use that to their advantage.

They may have a certain specialism in their field, but using Henry Ford as an example, having a solid team of people who fill out your knowledge gaps is far more important than having all the answers for yourself. Henry Ford was the founder of Ford Motor Cars and was a very wealthy man in his time.

A Chicago paper published some articles after the First World War, claiming that Henry Ford was an “ignorant pacifist”. Mr. Ford rejected the idea that he was ignorant and retaliated by bringing a libel suit against the paper, even taking the not-so-common approach of putting himself on the witness stand to prove that he was in fact, a very clever man with nothing to hide.

The court lawyers asked Mr. Ford a series of pointless general knowledge questions and accused him of being a man who runs a car company with no real knowledge or experience with cars, the industry, academics or mechanics. The answer he gave silenced the court and became a very famous statement…

“If I should really WANT to answer the foolish question you have just asked, or any of the other questions you have been asking me, let me remind you that I have a row of electric push-buttons on my desk, and by pushing the right button, I can summon to my aid men who can answer ANY question I desire to ask concerning the business to which I am devoting most of my efforts. Now, will you kindly tell me, WHY I should clutter up my mind with general knowledge, for the purpose of being able to answer questions, when I have men around me who can supply any knowledge I require?”

This retort was genius. The fact was – Ford didn’t have all the answers and that was OK. He had instead kept his mind free from clutter and employed experts in their fields to answer his questions while he focused on keeping his company running smoothly. If he needed to know about brakes, he would push the button for that expert, if he needed someone to explain engines to him, he had another. He used the specialized knowledge of others as an external brain to store extra information in and it made him the success he was.

You Too Can Be Like Henry Ford

We now live in the greatest information age of our time. You can Google any question you may have, so without qualifications – we are becoming experts just by searching.

The point is this – do not avoid a certain field or reject a job opportunity or investment because you feel you are not up to scratch, use other experts and research to find out as much as you can about your industry. Knowledge is power. If you think you don’t have it and that’s stopping you from moving forward, find someone who does and get up to speed.