Recently I’ve noticed an influx into the market of web-based Facebook builder apps: services which allow non-techies to create custom Facebook pages or Facebook apps without needing to understand code or hire a developer. Having tried some first-hand, I thought I’d do a quick list of some of these tools to help you choose which might be right for you. As most of my clients are small biz and/or non-profit, I’m not including any of the big fancy ‘platform manager’ things which cost a lot: these are all available for free or a low fee (usually monthly pay-as-you-go).

Pagemodo

Best for: easy Welcome pages

Pagemodo is designed to be easy-peasy, and you really can create a nice looking custom landing page (Welcome tab) in just a few minutes. It’s free if you don’t mind Pagemodo branding, and if you pay as little as $6.25 per month, you can have up to 3 pages: either 3 different types of ‘tabs’ (eg. Twitter feed, Welcome tab & map page) – OR – if you manage 3 different brands on Facebook, you could have 1 custom ‘tab’ on each. You can also add a gateway which forces people to Like your page in order to have access to content (use sparingly!). Be warned though, the tool is a bit buggy and clunky, and the templates are a bit rigid design-wise.

Involver

Best for: integrating other social feeds & content

On Involver‘s free plan, you can use up to 2 of the Basic level apps, most of which are designed to pull content from other social sites into Facebook: Flickr photos, YouTube videos, Twitter feed, or RSS (eg your blog posts). There’s also a coupon app, as well as the ability to embed docs via Scribd (PDF, etc), and an iFrame maker which will allow you to embed any web page into a Facebook tab… but use this last one with caution as Facebook’s area is not as wide as most web pages, so you’ll ideally need a designer to make it look nice. If you need more than 2 apps or if you want their Pro apps (Polls, Signup forms, etc), then the price jumps up a lot to a whopping $99 per month (ouch!). I’d love to see them offering some middle ground in terms of pricing in future.

North Social

Best for: all-u-can-eat apps

North Social is the ‘buffet’ option: all the apps you want for 1 price. The price varies depending on how many Fans you have, starting at $20 per month for less than 1,000 Fans. The choice of apps is quite extensive, ranging from a few types of special offers and integrated shops useful for commercial businesses, to volunteering and donation useful for charities or garnering support for good causes, to the usual practical ones such as maps, photo galleries, embedded video, welcome pages and integrated Twitter or RSS feeds. North Social gives you many options to help build your fan base, but if you already have thousands of fans, it may not be the cheapest option: more than 5,000 fans and you’re looking at $50+ per month.

Wildfire

Best for: competitions & short-term campaigns

Wildfire‘s approach is a bit different from the others, as they price on a per-campaign basis. The fee starts from $5 + $0.99 per day for a basic campaign, but you’ll want to spend $25 + $2.99 per day if you want custom branding options. Wildfire has a range of different types of competitions, quizzes and contests, including contests where you can allow your fans to choose the winner. You could also use their ‘flash deal’ coupon option to create Groupon-style promotions. The downside to Wildfire is that they include other people’s campaigns in the confirmation email that gets sent to your fans who enter your own contest, which may not be the kind of thing you want to push on your fanbase.

Booshaka

Best for: Top Fans leaderboard

If you’d like to drive a little healthy competitive spirit among your Fans, you might want to look at Booshaka, as that’s their core offering: creating a hierarchical list of your fans based on their activity. Hitting right at the gamification sweet spot, the goal here is to increase interactions by employing game psychology, aiming at our basal human need to one-up each other in public On the paying plan, you can even add Foursquare-style badges to the mix, but sadly I can’t see their pricing and I must admit there’s a real shoestring start-up vibe on their site as some of their own site links don’t work or take you to ‘coming soon’ pages. Time to grow up guys.

This isn’t an extensive list, but these are just some of the tools I’ve tried and/or know about. If you have any similar tools that you have experience with, please do leave a comment as I am always interested to find other ways of helping people encourage engagement through social media.

With more and more companies using social media for business, it’s increasingly important for businesses to have a set of guidelines or rules of engagement which can ensure that employees know what to do when interacting online. It’s equally important for managers and superiors to have these guidelines in place, as they may not be accustomed to the style of communication that social media requires. Too often companies jump on board with Twitter or Facebook, using these channels purely to send out marketing messages and press releases. And then they are surprised when the results aren’t there. I ask: “Would you tune into a TV channel that was 100% commercials?” I think not. So it’s no surprise that people are tuning out these constant sales messages.

Here’s my take on the rules of engagement for staff whose job it is to interact with people through social media and online communities. It may be their sole job, or part of their job. My version below is made up in large part from a great O’Reilly article in Forbes and AMP3 PR, who have done a great job in creating a working policy for their own employees – a big shout out to them!

Guidelines for Social Media in the Workplace

We expect everyone who participates in online commentary / social media to understand and to follow these simple but important guidelines. These guidelines cover all social media and online community platforms including but not limited to:

• Social networking (such as Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn)
• Micro-blogging sites (such as Twitter)
• Blogs (including company and external blogs, as well as comments)
• Video/photo sharing sites (such as Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo)
• Online communities (forums, discussion boards)
• Collaborative documents / wikis (such as Wikipedia)
• Review sites (such as Qype, WeLoveLocal)

Social Web Guidelines for Employees

Pick & mix.
Spend some time researching and reading up on various sites before deciding where it makes sense for you to spend the majority of your time online. You can’t be everywhere, so pick sites which rank well and are well-visited by the company’s target audience and/or connected to our core business. Then, feel free to mix in a smaller portion of less-popular sites or blogs when comments or topics warrant it.

Look before you leap.
Read, read and read some more. Learn the landscape and individual style of conversations on that particular site – every site has its own (usually unwritten) rules and quirks. The quickest way to make a fool of yourself or get banned from a site is to dive in without first understanding the lay of the land.

Listen before you talk.
Before entering any conversation, understand the context. Whom are you speaking to? Is this a forum for “trolls and griefers?” Is there a good reason for you to join the conversation? If your answer is yes, then follow these practices when engaging online:

Say who you are.
Always be transparent about who you are and who you represent. Use your real name, identify who you work for and what your role is. You can disclose this on your About page or bio, and please also indicate that your opinions do not represent official positions of the company. If possible, include a link to the company website in this page and/or your signature – but only if this is allowed on that particular site. Use your best judgment to determine when this might be appropriate.

Show your personality.
You weren’t hired to be an automaton. Be conversational while remaining professional. Bring your own personal flavour and experiences to your postings: be YOU first and foremost, and an employee of the company secondly. Part of the whole point in having you communicate online in a work capacity is to provide a real, human face to the business.

Add value, not noise.
Social media is about conversations, personal advice, recommendations and building relationships. It is not a sales channel or means for distributing press releases. Remember the 80/20 rule of thumb: 80% of your conversations should be about general topics relevant to the business and/or your own experiences, only 20% should be about the company’s products or services.

Build a following.
Promote yourself by finding and sharing information that will be interesting to your friends and followers and useful for them to share. Become a trusted part of the online community – not only by creating your own content, but sharing others’. Establish relationships online with other people you respect and trust.

Be responsive.
If someone responds to something you’ve said, be responsive and follow-up quickly. If you say something in error, don’t delete it, simply go back and update it with the correct information.

Know you’re always “On”.
You represent the company at all times and you must assume that your social media usage is visible to customers, managers and prospects. Be careful what and with whom you are sharing. Keep in mind that while we all have the occasional work frustration, Facebook and Twitter are not the best venues in which to air them as those comments are available to your customers and coworkers.

Be respectful.
Respond to ideas, not personalities. Don’t question motives, use profanity or demeaning language, or make remarks that are off topic or offensive. Always demonstrate respect for others’ points of view, even when they’re not offering the same in return. Take the high road: never pick fights and don’t say anything you wouldn’t say to someone’s face and in the presence of others. If you are sharing a negative experience or commenting on a brand or individual, please try to do so in a constructive way.

Don’t expect perfection.
Do expect to make newbie mistakes, and don’t expect everyone to love you. No matter how nice, calm or inoffensive you are, and no matter how much research you do, there will be times when you will trip up and say something unpopular. It’s OK – shake it off and just remember that how you handle this is more important than the misstep itself.

Have full disclosure.
If you are writing an advertorial or other sponsored content – or if you are contracting others to post on the company’s social properties in exchange for money – make sure there’s a clear distinction between the normal / free content and any paid content. Today’s web users are savvy people, and hiding paid activities are a quick way to a bad online reputation.

Know your facts and always give proper credit.
It’s OK to quote others, but never attempt to pass off someone else’s language, photography, or other information as your own. Always give proper attribution (by linkbacks, public mentions, re-tweets and so on). All copyright, privacy, and other laws that apply offline apply online as well. Be sure to credit your sources when posting a link or information gathered from another source.

Think ahead.
Everything you say can (and likely will) be used in the court of public opinion–forever.  Be smart about protecting yourself, your privacy, and the company’s confidential information. What you publish is widely accessible and will be around for a long time so consider the content carefully. Google has a long memory.

Be in it for the long haul.
Don’t expect instant fame, audiences or popularity: building a trusted online presence takes time.

If you respond to a problem, you own it.
If you become the point of contact for a customer or employee complaint, stay with it until it is resolved.

Play nice.
We encourage you to connect with other employees and affiliates online. In doing so, we ask you to remember that sharing personal information about co-workers may affect them inside as well as outside of the office. All standard HR policies apply to interactions between colleagues across the social web.

__________________________

If the above policy is not quite what your own company needs, have a look at this list of social media policies from a huge range of types of organisation, from non-profits through to large corporates. Or indeed check the online database of social media policies.

Now that the internet as we know it has been around a while, you’d think that people would have stopped making truly horrible, un-usable, unreadable and downright ridiculous websites. You’d THINK that, but you’d be wrong. The aptly named Webpages That Suck has pulled together their top 25 worst websites of 2010, which is a great place to look for some holiday season laughs. My favourite has to be number one on the list: Yale School of Art (pictured above).

Having been to art school myself, I totally understand that they are doing a post-modern interpretation of a website, parodying those early 90s websites with the same tongue in cheek that Duchamp, Warhol or Koons had when making their art. I get it, OK? But the difference between a website and a piece of art is that a website such as this has to perform a functional duty: to disseminate information to the viewer in an accessible way. Art doesn’t have to perform this task. Art can therefore be as sublime or ridiculous as the artist wants it to be, without necessarily infringing on its raison d’etre in any way. Sure, art can disseminate information, but usually this is not essential factual information that the viewer has come to the art piece looking for; generally, the message of art is that of conveying the artist’s viewpoint or evoking emotions on something.

Websites are different. Now, I am not saying that all websites have to conform to the norms of usability and accessiblity. But websites that act as the one and only online interface for any business, organisation or individual should. There are laws about this stuff for a reason; defying these on informational websites doesn’t make you clever or creative in the eyes of your audience: it simply makes you annoying and stupid. Can you read – or even FIND – the school’s address on the page shown in this image on the right? Click it to view a larger image…

Don’t get me wrong: I *love* online art. I have contributed to sites such as SITO’s HyGrid (one of the earliest online art collaboarations) and I think The Johnny Cash project is a brilliant combo of art and wiki culture. And there are plenty of great sites which push the boundary between art and design. But the boundary between these two areas is really quite important when it comes to websites such as the Yale one. I would have no problem whatsoever if the Yale folks decided to make an online art piece. And I’d be fine with them creating a website as unreadable as the one they have, so long as they made it easy for people to opt out of that design and view the site in an alternate version.

My problem with the Yale site is that this illegible beast is the only place you can find the information, and they have made getting it pretty damn difficult and frustrating. I don’t care how cool or PoMo it looks, to me, this is bad design. The goal of design should be to enhance the use of an object, not get in the way of it. If you bought a can opener designed by a product designer, no matter how beautiful it was, if it didn’t open cans you’d be chucking it in the bin. If not, you could hang it on your wall and call it art. Art isn’t meant to be useful; design is. Anyone who has ever clicked ‘skip intro‘ or ‘view HTML version‘ buttons on a Flash website knows this.

The funny thing is that the Yale site used to be even worse: it used to have a flashing animated background (check it out here – warning: may cause seizures!). I am guessing some poor unsuspecting epileptic made the mistake of visiting their site, and the resulting lawsuit* forced them to change it

* I don’t really think this, but it sounded more intriguing than what probably actually did happen.

Well I guess it was only a matter of time: the ‘for Dummies’ series of books have just added Corporate Blogging for Dummies to their arsenal of practical how-to books for business. Douglas Karr from the Marketing Tech blog is one of the authors, and if the blog is anything to go by, I am sure this book will be chock full of really useful and implementable tips. Currently only available in the USA, it releases here in the UK on the 19th – and Amazon are already taking pre-orders, so get in there!

The really great thing is that Douglas and Chantelle (co-author) have set up a microsite to accompany the book. One of the most useful things on the microsite is the list of good corporate blogs, which is a great place to start reading if you are thinking of blogging for business. I always recommend that people start by reading blogs relevant to their industry BEFORE they ever even consider starting a blog, so this list is sure to have something relevant to you, as it’s quite a comprehensive list (I’ve bookmarked it already myself).

There’s also a wealth of good info on the Marketing Tech blog, so have a looksie at their b2b blogging posts… and here’s a couple of my own posts from the archive which might be of interest, too:

• How to start blogging at work – part 1
• How to start blogging at work – part 2
• How to start blogging at work – part 3

Happy blogging!

Tonight I had the pleasure of speaking at this month’s Women in Publishing event, sharing my experience and advice on blogging. I was also lucky enough to meet and sit alongside a proper blogging celebrity, Nadine Jolie, who had quite a glamorous and exciting story to share about how she got into blogging and how it changed her life.  Have a read of her bio and you’ll get a glimpse into her experience as a blogger – if not into the amazing back-story about how her confidential beauty blog lost her 2 jobs but gained her 2 book deals and a career as a pro blogger. Nadine shared her own experiences and advice on how to find your voice, what to write about, what success looks like and more. And she looked fabulous too – she must be taking her own beauty advice

As for me, I stuck to what I know best, which is giving advice and coaching people on getting started in blogging, particularly from a business perspective. I thought it might be useful to point people at my series of How to start blogging posts, so here goes:

How to start blogging at work – Part 1
This covers what to think about and do before you even set up a blogging account/tool

How to start blogging at work – Part 2
This post includes getting internal approval/buy-in and creating your first posts

How to start blogging at work – Part 3
This post gives some tips and advice on how to keep the momentum going, writing tips, and tools to make the whole process easier

Enjoy!

Tomorrow night I will be speaking about blogging at the June Women In Publishing event. I’ll be sharing some of my previous experiences coaching people on blogging, as well as sharing some tips & things to think about before you start, as well as common pitfalls and hurdles – such as dealing with comment spam, blog guilt, writer’s block and more. If you are interested in meeting women who work in all areas of publishing (writers, printers, editors, publishers, etc), fancy a drink and some casual networking, and/or want to know more about blogging, why not come along? Details are here.

The external links that point to your site play an important role in where your site appears in the search engine results. You can think of it this way: every link from a relevant external site that points to your site counts as a ‘vote of confidence’ in Google’s eyes. In fact, it is agreed by search engine optimisation professionals that 4 out of the top 5 factors affecting your Google ranking are about external links. But when it comes to search engines, not all links are created equal. So what makes a good link from an SEO perspective? If you have partners or customers who are willing to link to you, how exactly is the best way for them to do it, in order to give you the maximum benefit?

Here’s my take on this, hopefully explained in a way that anyone (even non-techies) can understand. Let’s start from the worst moving up to the best…

DREADFUL: Image Link, no ALT tag, meaningless image name

Example:

SEO-usefulness: 0.5 (out of 5)

This link is not really doing you any favours. OK, it’s a link, but it’s not working very hard as far as SEO is concerned. Google – like all other search engines – cannot ‘see’ images. So even though this link says SEOMoz, the words are part of an image. You can tell by trying to highlight it with your cursor: words that are images do not highlight as text. Therefore, Google can’t really tell what this is.

This image has no ALT tag, either. An ALT tag is a little bit of code that tells visually impaired people (and search engines) what the image is. So for a photo of a green apple, the ALT tag might say “green apple”. You can tell if an image has an ALT tag by hovering your mouse over an image. If there’s an ALT tag, the text will popup (some people call this ‘tooltips’).

Finally, the filename of this image has nothing to do with the website where it is pointing. The filename is “logo135b.jpg”. Unless someone goes onto Google and types “logo135b”, this is no help whatsoever. In fact, I encourage you to go to Google now and type logo135b in the search box. Does this give you any clues as to how image names can help with SEO?

POOR: Image Link, with ALT tag, meaningful image name

Example:

SEO-usefulness: 1 (out of 5)

I see this as the bare minimum when it comes to a link that is useful from an SEO perspective. Even though Google still can’t ‘see’ the image, it can read the text in the ALT tag, and that text contains the brand name of the website it is pointing to (hover your mouse over the image to see). Furthermore, the filename of the image is “seomoz.png” – which also contains the brand name of the website it is pointing to. Luckily, in this case, the brand name and website URL have something to do with the services that the company offers. But if your company name is something like “Deep Blue” and you sell shoes, you’re not so lucky. There’s nothing in your brand or URL that tells Google – or human visitors – that deepblue.com sells shoes. So the usefulness of any links that mention the words “Deep Blue” are only helpful to you from a branding perspective. We’ll expand on this next…

FAIR: Image Link, keywords in ALT tag, keywords in image name

Example:

SEO-usefulness: 2 (out of 5)

If you simply must use an image link (for branding purposes/advertising), this is the way to do it. The ALT tag here is “search engine optimization resources” – and this contains keywords that people might use when searching on Google for such a site. The filename of the actual image itself is “search-engine-resources.jpg” – again, this contains keywords. Including keywords as part of the link is absolutely critical: Google sees this as saying “Hey, look over there on that site if you are interested in search engine optimization resources”. Naturally, this only works if the site you are pointing to actually contains search engine optimization resources. Google isn’t stupid.

You can further improve the usefulness of the image link by adding a text link directly under or next to it, something like the below…

MIDDLING: Text Link, keywords near the link text

Example:

SEOmoz.org – a good place to look for search engine optimization resources

… if you are interested in reading more about search engine optimization, you might look here.

SEO-usefulness: 2-3 (out of 5)

Now we’re getting somewhere. Google likes text, and text-based links. More importantly, remember that the success of Google is based on TRUST and RELEVANCE. So this is what Google uses when evaluating links. We’ll get to the TRUST part in a minute, but as for RELEVANCE, this is how it works: Google sees a link on a page, and if there’s nothing in the link itself to give clues about what the linked site is about, Google then looks at the text in the immediate vicinity to find out what the link is pointing to. It is common sense, really. The words around the link give context, and indicate that the link is relevant to that topic.

Now, ordinarily a link with a generic word like “here” (above) is a bit of a wasted opportunity. But luckily, this one has been partially rescued by putting some relevant keywords in the link title (hover your mouse over it to see). However, it’s still not as good as the link above it, and nowhere near as good as the following…

GOOD: Text Link, keywords in the link text

Example:

SEOmoz.org – a good place to look for search engine optimization resources

… if you are interested in reading more about search engine optimization, you might look at SEOmoz.

SEO-usefulness: 3 (out of 5)

Even better: use the keywords in the link text itself. This is a clear signpost to Google indicating that the linked site is all about the topic of search engine optimization. Equally importantly, it’s a clear signpost to site visitors that when they click on that link, they will find search engine optimization resources. This is almost as good as it gets in terms of relevance…

I say almost because relevance is not just about the words immediately in and around the link. What is on the rest of the page?

BETTER: Text Link, keywords in the link text, on a page about the relevant topic

Example:

As above, but in an article about SEO

SEO-usefulness: 4 (out of 5)

Naturally, if the rest of the page is about web design, and there’s a link to an SEO site stuck on, then this is not as good in terms of relevance as a link on a page/article purely dedicated to SEO. So if you think about my own blog (what you are reading right now), the links I have used as examples on this page are exactly what we are talking about: the text links above are a 4 out of 5 in SEO-usefulness for SEOmoz because this entire article is about SEO.

Think about how most links occur on static websites: more often than not, they are lumped into a page called “Useful Links” or something. Usually there is nothing on that page that gives any relevant info about those links. Now think about how most links occur on blogs: usually they are sprinkled throughout the text in an article about a relevant topic. With this in mind, is it any wonder why blog pages often appear high in search engine results*?

But wait, there’s more…

BEST: Text Link, keywords in the link text, on a page about the relevant topic, on a trusted site

Example:

As above, in an article about SEO, on a site trusted to be about SEO

SEO-usefulness: 5 (out of 5)

This is the Holy Grail of value when it comes to external links and SEO. Remember, I said we’d talk about TRUST later, so here we are. Google wants to give customers the best possible results, so it makes sense that a link from a trusted, relevant website is best. You would do the same: you’d trust a mechanic’s car recommendation more than you would trust a baker’s. At the beginning of this article, I said a link is like a vote of confidence, so a vote from a website that is well-established in its niche area is better than a vote from a site which isn’t.

If we look at the example of the SEOMoz links, if all other factors are equal, a link from my blog is not going to be nearly as valuable as a link from a site like Search Engine Watch. Search Engine Watch is all about SEO, it’s been online for many years, it has lots of relevant SEO links pointing to it, and it ranks high in search engines itself. In this sense, Google trusts Search Engine Watch more than it trusts me. Which is fine by me – I trust Search Engine Watch more, too!

So there we have it, the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to inbound links and search engines. Now you can make better use of adverts, partner links and hopefully make better links yourself, too.


* Search engines also like fresh content, rather than stale mouldy old pages… but that’s a whole other article!

Well, at the January NetTuesday I managed to build a pretty decent-looking website live, in 33 minutes. The lovely Amy from NetSquared has uploaded some video of the presentation, and the videos of the actual website build will be coming soon, I’m told. But in the meantime, you can have a look at the slides from my presentation about how web apps have fundamentally changed the web design industry and web project lifecycles. Some linkies for you:

- Web design before web applications (video)
- Web design after web applications (video)
- View the presentation (slides)

I was really thrilled to see the Meetup attendees gave me a 5 out of 5 rating for the presentation, and I hope they will find the info and tips to be useful. It’s a lot to cover in an hour (both theory & practice), so the slides may be a very broad generalisation, but I do think the concept holds true: making websites today bears little resemblance to the way we used to build them even just a few years ago.

I think the really interesting thing to me is how I now tend to input content first, and do design second. This is completely the opposite of how we used to do things. But it’s a great tip when working with content management systems like WordPress or Squarespace, because it means you can create a design that you know will work with the type of content you have. So often we as designers would mock up something that looked beautiful with a couple of paragraphs of ‘lorem ipsum’, only to find that the design didn’t work so well with loads of text and several photos, which is what the client needed to have on the page. If you’re a designer, give it a try on your next project.

Recently clients & enquirers have been asking about which platform is better – WordPress or Squarespace – so I thought it might be helpful to post a comparison here. This is based on my own experience in using, designing for and administering websites and blogs on both platforms: your mileage may vary. But here’s how I see it…

NOTE: All comparisons and info below relate to WordPress.org, which is the installed version that you download and install on your own hosting. I am not including WordPress.com in this comparison, which is the hosted version of WordPress that you sign up / subscribe to. This comparison is for professionals and small businesses, and I don’t feel that WordPress.com is the right choice for this purpose.

Similarities between WordPress & Squarespace

There are a number of similar characteristics and functions of the two products; here’s a few of the most relevant ones. Both:

• Can be used for creating and managing blogs or a variety of different types of website
• Are cost-effective, starting at a few pounds per month for hosting/subscription
• Allow you to use your own domain name (instead of something like http://yourdomain.wordpress.com )
• Allow non-technical people to update the website text/content without much training
• Offer a lot of visual design flexibility, in which an experienced designer/developer (like me) can create polished, professional websites quickly ; however, there are some design limitations with both systems
• Use template-based designs that can be easily changed, customised or tweaked in future without affecting the content
• Have a number of search-engine-friendly elements built into the way the pages/sites are structured
• Offer the ability to have multiple authors/editors with different levels of editing permission
• Have the capability to use/embed Flash, video or other media within the site
• Have their own quirks – things that don’t quite make sense – but are easily worked around once you figure it out

So what are the main differences?

About Squarespace

Squarespace is a full-featured hosted content management system (CMS) designed for websites and blogs.  Users pay a monthly subscription fee to Squarespace in return for hosting the site and access to the content management system. You don’t download anything and you don’t need to find hosting: as soon as you sign up online, you can get started working on your site.

Squarespace Pros:

• The subscription fee includes full technical support from Squarespace. Response times have been quick in the past: anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours.
• Cost effective: the lower level subscription rates are comparable to the cost of standard web hosting, with a lot more included.
• Very intuitive content management system: incredibly user-friendly (the best I have seen at this price point). It is clear that Squarespace developers focus a lot on usability.
• Offers scope for additional functionality (eg custom forms, private client pages) through built-in features & modules that are easy to set up, usually even by non-technical people. These modules are supported by Squarespace’s tech support in case of any problems.
• Basic website statistics are built-in, and conveniently accessed through the same login used for editing the site.
• All the infrastructure is managed by Squarespace. This means future product upgrades are applied automatically by Squarespace, so you don’t need to install anything or worry about whether you are using the latest version (you always are).
• Everything’s in one place: if something goes wrong, you know it’s Squarespace. With WordPress, you sometimes can’t easily tell whether it’s a WordPress problem or a problem with your hosting provider, making troubleshooting take longer.

Squarespace Cons:

• As a fully-hosted solution, you cannot shop around for better hosting deals: you are tied in to Squarespace’s hosting and prices.
• Some added features are only available through higher monthly fee subscription packages.
• Some features cannot be easily customised without a designer/developer’s help (custom coding).
• The statistics that come built into Squarespace are not as detailed as those from Google Analytics or other web analytics tools (note: you can install Google Analytics or other on Squarespace).
• Squarespace is not a huge company with thousands of developers, so product improvements and enhancements are not released as often as with bigger CMS products, nor as often as new plugins for WordPress become available.

About WordPress

WordPress is an open source blogging platform that can be adapted for use as both a standard website CMS and/or blog.  You need a suitable hosting provider and a downloaded version of WordPress to get started. Once this is installed, you login to your WordPress admin panel to work on the site.

WordPress Pros:

• WordPress is available free of charge, without having to pay a license fee or subscription, so the only cost related to purchase is the cost of web hosting. This means you can shop around for the best hosting deal, or move hosts in future should you choose to.
• WordPress is one of the world’s most-used and well-supported blog CMS platforms; it has an active support community and a development roadmap, with frequent upgrades that constantly improve functionality and security. Out of all the open source blog CMS platforms, it’s the one I recommend most.
• A huge range of 3rd party plugins is available to expand the functionality of WordPress. The variety of plugins available is far greater than the variety of modules available for expanding Squarespace. Plugins include website analytics/ statistics through Google Analytics (just one example).
• The fact that it is open source (rather than commercial) appeals to some clients from an ethical perspective. This means that you are free to use the product without many restrictions of commercial software, and are supporting the open source ideology.

WordPress Cons:

• The fact that it is open source (rather than commercial) is a barrier/turn-off to some clients. They want the assurances that come with a commercial organisation developing and taking responsibility for the product. They want to be able to hold someone accountable, and be able to contact someone whose job it is to respond, in case of any problem.
• Although WordPress is a popular platform, it is reliant on the pool of open-source developers for all product improvements and bug-fixes, who do this free of charge, primarily in their free time. Therefore, it can sometimes take a while for bugs to be fixed.
• The user interface for administering and editing is a bit less intuitive than Squarespace, and not as user-friendly.
• Most added features are only available as 3rd-party plugins or widgets: this means they are not supported by WordPress, and can sometimes cause compatibility issues when the WordPress platform is upgraded. And sometimes they are just plain rubbish, as there is no quality-control process. Anyone can develop and release a plugin/widget, so there’s a high chaff-to-wheat ratio.
• Because WordPress is an installed application, someone must manually upgrade the product whenever a new version is released. Failure to upgrade can cause security risks, but upgrading can create compatibility issues (see above).

So which is better?

There is no right or wrong answer: the best tool will depend on your own preference, and whether you have someone you can trust to help design/develop/administer/train on that particular platform. Because as easy as they both are to use, it can really help to have someone who knows what they are doing to work with you, at least in the beginning.

I’m back in the UK after my long trip back to the States, and while I was away, my latest Squarespace site went live: IT recruitment and consulting service provider Populo. This time I had the pleasure of working with Katrina Dixon, aka The Marketing Lady, who is working with Populo on their marketing. It was great to have a partner on the project, and I think the results are a polished site that promotes and explains Populo’s offering in a really appealing and engaging way. I hope I have the opportunity to work with other marketeers this way in future.

This project was particularly interesting for me because the client wanted to use Squarespace in a somewhat unconventional way: the blogging functionality has been adapted to act as a job listing tool. While it may not provide all the bells and whistles of a fully-featured job engine, it certainly does what it needs to, and demonstrates that with a little creative thinking, web platforms such as Squarespace or WordPress can be adapted to work for almost any type of business or website.

Blogging functionality can be used to house any information that needs to be presented chronologically and/or categorised, whether it’s news, events, job postings, recipes or properties for sale – yet the word ‘blog’ has very specific connotations to most non-web-techies. I often wonder if there needs to be a rebrand of products such as Squarespace and WordPress, who are known primarily as ‘blogging’ platforms, because it’s sometimes difficult to get past the associations with this word when recommending these products to clients. Maybe in future there will be some clever term that sums up the capabilities of blog tools without the baggage of that word.