WordPress for a common cause

Written by Tom Greenwood - April 16, 2014

This week I had the privilege of helping out at an event for the social enterprise For Common Cause, who crowd-source support and funding for entrepreneurs from challenging backgrounds.  With a little bit of help from a network of volunteers from the business world, they can get their own ventures off the ground, create a livelihood for themselves, gain independence, contribute to the economy and hopefully make their own dreams come true.

I’m a huge advocate of entrepreneurship and believe that entrepreneurs create employment, drive progress and help to empower society.  With them we would have a stagnant economy with a society that does not know how to provide for itself.  Society needs employees, but even they should possess the entrepreneurial spirit (intrapreneurs).  Right now our society has an entrepreneurship deficit and so it is great to see initiatives like For Common Cause that encourage people and nurture their entrepreneurial side, especially among those who may not typically receive much support or encouragement and don’t have the benefit of money, contacts and experience to get them started.

I was assigned to give some website advice to a bubbly and enthusiastic lady called Wynniefred who is in the early stages of starting her own therapist business in Croydon.  She had a lot of really good questions and I was impressed by her willingness to learn new things and get her hands dirty on the web.

Some issues were unique to Wynniefred’s therapy business such as the requirement from a professional body to create a separate website focussed exclusively on hypnotherapy services.  However, many issues were things that come up time and time again when people are starting up n business or getting their business online for the first time.  Things like:

  • What domain name should I use?
  • Is WordPress the right solution and why?
  • Where should I host my website?
  • How much should I pay for hosting?
  • Can I have my own email address?
  • What should my website look like?
  • Will I have full ownership of my website?
  • How can I get people to visit my website?

This year we are planning to build a Q&A area on our website so that people can submit these kinds of questions to our team of marketing and WordPress experts and hopefully build up a useful resource for the small business community.

The fact is that there are many small businesses that cannot afford to hire a web design agency or even a freelancer to help them.  But just because they can’t afford it, does not mean that they need it any less.  Some might argue that they need help even more.  That’s why initiatives like For Common Cause are so great.  The more that we can build communities to share knowledge, skills and experience, the more we can empower entrepreneurs to make a difference in our society.

If you’re stating out in business and have a question about WordPress or web marketing that you would like our team to answer, please post it below.  When we get our new Q&A section online we’ll do our best to answer as many questions as possible.