Our answer is the same: WordPress.

And here’s why. We could call John’s article: “The reasons to ditch whatever else you are using.”

This material  originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com.

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25 Reasons Your Business Should Switch to WordPress

by John Rampton

Originally launched in 2003, WordPress has become perhaps the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world. Today, WordPress is used by more than 74 million sites that publish new posts every second. No matter the size of the blog that is using WordPress. This widely used CMS has become a favorite among businesses because of how powerful of a tool it is. Just how powerful is WordPress exactly? Check out the following 25 reasons why your business should switch to WordPress and you’ll see why.

1. It’s free.

Whether you’re a blogger or just launching a new online business, the fact that WordPress is 100 percent free is extremely beneficial. Best of all, you never have to worry about hidden charges if your site becomes more popular than expected. WordPress will always be free for you to use.

On top of that, WordPress is also open source. This means that you can improve or alter the source code to create the right site for your needs.

2. Powerful right out of the box.

Unlike other content management systems, WordPress is ready to use immediately after installation. This means that you don’t have to “hunt down, install, and configure a long-list of add-ons just to get many of the features WordPress considers core (comments, RSS feeds, revisions, etc.).”

3. Flexible.

The flexibility of WordPress is another feature that can’t be topped. No matter what you’re using WordPress for – whether as a personal blog or to a popular ecommerce site, WordPress is versatile enough to meet any and all of your needs through its extensive features and extensions.

4. Search engine friendly.

The most popular search engines actually prefer sites that are powered by WordPress because its framework is easy to crawl. In fact, Google’s Matt Cutts actually endorsed WordPress during WordCamp San Francisco 2009. His personal blog is on WordPress.

5. Safe and secure.

Since WordPress is such a popular CMS, it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s a target for hackers. However, WordPress takes the security of its users very seriously. While you can practice some basic security measures, such as not downloading a theme or plugin from an untrusted site, WordPress constantly updates its software to prevent attacks. In fact, WordPress has an automatic update feature ever since the release of version 3.7.

Related: The 7 WordPress Plugins Your Site Needs to Succeed

6. Customizable.

Because of the thousands of plugins and themes that WordPress has offer, with just one click of a button you can customize your site to appear and function as you would like. Furthermore, because of the seemingly endless number of features that WordPress has to offer, you can create the website or blog that you’ve always wanted.

7. Easy to use.

Another great perk of using WordPress is how easy it is to use. The platform is user-friendly, intuitive and easy to learn. In fact, you can learn how to use WordPress in a matter of minutes. No wonder WordPress is known for its famous “5-Minute Install.”

8. Lots of support.

WordPress also comes with unprecedented support. This is in part to the extensive WordPress community where you can troubleshoot any question or concern through the WordPress Forums.

9. Hosts multimedia.

The addition of images, video or audio files is a great way to enhance the experience of your users. Thankfully, WordPress makes it easy for you to insert multimedia files into a page or post. Not only is it easy for you to upload multimedia files, you can also edit files, like images, while in the Media Library Screen.

10. Mobile friendly.

It’s more important than ever for a website to be mobile friendly to accommodate smartphones and tablets. With WordPress, however, you don’t have to be concerned over that. It’s already mobile friendly, thanks to many of the themes being responsive.

11. Integration.

WordPress integrates with some of the most powerful platforms available to give your business that additional boost. Need to launch an email campaign? You can use a service like Aweber or MailChimp. Want to get paid for a product or service? WordPress can work with some of the most popular payment gateways in the world.

12. Easy to manage.

As mentioned earlier, WordPress is equipped with a built-in updater for security purposes. However, WordPress also notifies you whenever there are updates for your themes and plugins. This makes managing your WordPress site a breeze, since you’ll always be current on the latest updates. That will keep your site safe and fresh.

13. More than just a blog.

While WordPress earned its reputation as a great blogging platform that can be inserted into an existing website, WordPress itself can be used as a website. Because WordPress contains a post and page structure, you can have daily blog posts, as well as static pages – such as your Contact or About pages.

14. Establishes a community.

Whether it’s by sharing your blog posts on social media networks or by communicating with visitors in the comments section, WordPress has the features and plugins to make the establishment of a community convenient and easy.

15. Saves you money.

Remember, WordPress is a free software. However, that’s not the only area where you’ll save money. Because WordPress is open source and user-friendly, you won’t have to hire web designers or technicians to launch or maintain your WordPress site.

16. Numerous ecommerce solutions.

Since you’re using WordPress for your business, then you will be happy to know that there are a number of ecommerce solutions that will convert your site into an all-out digital store. By using plugins like WooCommerce, WP eCommerce or Shopp you can easily begin to make money online.

Related: More Than 100,000 WordPress Websites Reportedly Infected by Russian Malware

17. You’re not committed to one hosting provider.

If you need to switch a provider or host, either because they can’t handle traffic or you’re just frustrated with them, you can do it without experiencing much downtown. This is because WordPress works with pretty much every server. If you need to make the switch, I recommend that you review the following article from WPBeginner. There are several free WordPress hosting options as well.

18. Keeps your site looking fresh.

Whether you need to update your theme because you’ve had it for too long or you’re looking to take advantage of something like the holiday season, there are thousands of free themes to choose from. By doing this you’re keeping the appearance of your WordPress site fresh for your customers.

19. Can be used as a membership service.

If you want to continue to grow a loyal fan base, and maybe even make some additional income, then you can convert WordPress into a full-fledged membership site. When you create an exclusive membership site you’re providing members exclusive content they will find useful. If you want to create a membership site, you should look over this article by Nina Cross on DIYthemes.

20. Schedule posts.

Running a business is an extremely time-consuming task. However, WordPress can free up some additional time by giving you the ability to schedule posts in advance. This means that whenever you complete a post, you can schedule it during whatever time best suits you and your customers. For example, if you have discovered that the most traffic comes to your site between 12pm to 1pm on weekdays, then you could schedule posts around that time.

21. Multi-user capability.

There’s a very good possibility that you’ll have to rely on multiple people to keep your site up and running. WordPress is aware of this and has made it easy for you to assign different roles for different individuals. Here is a summary of these roles from WordPress Codex:

• Super Admin – somebody with access to the site network administration features and all other features. See the Create a Network article.
• Administrator – somebody who has access to all the administration features within a single site.
• Editor – somebody who can publish and manage posts including the posts of other users.
• Author – somebody who can publish and manage their own posts.
• Contributor – somebody who can write and manage their own posts but cannot publish them.
• Subscriber – somebody who can only manage their profile.

22. Add testimonials.

Assure potential customers that your products or services are worth the investment by including testimonials on your site. You can add this effective technique by installing a plugin like Easy Testimonials or the Testimonials Widget.

23. Publish content with one-click.

Have you just written an article or blog post that you need to publish immediately? No problem. After creating your amazing content, you can publish it with just the click of one-button. Furthermore, there are even a number of mobile apps that allow you to publish your WordPress content no matter where you are.

24. Universal platform.

WordPress features a universal platform. The WordPress dashboard always looks the same – no matter what you’re using WordPress for. You don’t need to hire experts or spend an excessive amount of time trying to figure out how to use WordPress. In fact, anyone with some sort of general PHP and MySQL experience can use WordPress immediately.

25. WordPress keeps getting better.

Because WordPress hires top-notch developers, you can be certain that WordPress is only going to get better as time goes on. Also, because WordPress is open source, any developer can enhance the user experience so that it can become the best CMS available.

WordPress can be one of the best platforms for your business.  Ever since I switch my personal and business sites to WordPress a couple years ago I have found out how powerful it can be. You can do literally everything with WordPress. I highly recommend that you switch today!

David Moth shared six shining examples on the Econsultancy blog.

HubSpot

HubSpot has attracted a whopping 284,200 followers, which is an impressive figure for a marketing software firm.

The main reason for its success is the massive amount of content it produces, ranging from blog posts to white papers, so digital marketing folk see HubSpot as a valuable source of information.

But it also gives its social media team freedom to tweet random questions and engage in conversations with people, giving the feed an injection of personality rather than just being a one-way marketing tool.

Yesterday it gave over control of the feed to CEO Brian Halligan, which is a good way of giving customers access to the person at the top of the organisation and again makes the feed different to the usual corporate social account.

One of the things I’m not so keen on is the fairly frequent retweets of compliments from other users, which may be a good way of gaining social proof for its products but personally I find it a bit self-congratulatory.

General Electric

General Electric’s main feed has just over 125,000 followers and focuses on technology and innovation rather than just pushing out sales messages, turning what could easily be a dull, corporate Facebook page into something genuinely interesting.

Also, the social team do a good job of responding to other users and recently rewarded people who complimented the brand’s new Agent Smith advert by sending them a Matrix-style photo of their avatar.

And obviously a company with GE’s expertise in social has also produced other noteworthy campaigns.

For example, on national inventors’ day in February it invited users to tweet their invention ideas using the #IWantToInvent hashtag then had a team of designers standing by to create blueprint sketches of the tweeted inventions in real time.

It produced more than 70 images in under seven hours, including solar powered wings and a doorbell ID, which can all be viewed in a Facebook photo album.

The campaign was supported with promoted tweets in timelines and search targeted to users interested in science and technology. According to Twitter, #IWantToInvent took a month to plan and increased brand conversations over 4x the daily average.

GE has also been a prolific user of Vine, creating more than 20 clips in the past few months. A number of the Vine’s use stop motion, including this excellent clip that celebrates Pi Day – it’s an endless pie.

Adobe

Adobe’s Twitter feed remains incredibly focused on its own products and company news, with nearly every tweet managing to crowbar in a brand mention, no matter how tenuous the link.

For example, it took advantage of Earth Day to tout the company’s own green credentials.

However, it also manages to avoid being tedious by tweeting a broad range of content, such as promotions, live updates from events, company news, and links to its other social platforms and forums.

Furthermore, the social team do a good job of responding to other users, answering product queries or questions about the website and engaging in general conversation.

And like General Electric, Adobe has been quick to begin experimenting with Vine to share content from its various events, including this clip of The Black Keys. As a result it’s managed to attract 168,148 followers.

Intel

Intel has an interesting, entertaining Twitter feed that shares a mix of company information, competitions, jokes, memes, articles and quotes.

Even so, I’m quite surprised that it’s managed to attract more than 1.3 million followers.

The social team very rarely respond to other users and the feed is mainly used as a broadcast tool, which rather undermines its social credentials.

So regardless of how entertaining it is I think it’s a case of the brand name attracting the followers rather than the content.

That said, it’s still a good example of how to bring some personality to a B2B Twitter feed and 1.3 million followers is not to be sniffed at.

Dell

Dell is well known for being brave with its social strategy, which is evidenced by the huge number of popular B2B Twitter feeds it operates.

Some of them simply deal with company news and announcements, but others are dedicated to answering customer service queries.

For example, there’s Dell Cares PRO which provides 24×7 global support and Dell for Business which answers questions from small and medium size businesses.

The different feeds also communicate with one another to make sure that customer queries are dealt with through the correct channel.

Providing round-the-clock support is no mean feat and obviously requires a great deal of commitment and investment in social throughout the business’ hierarchy.

To make sure it stays on top of things Dell has a social media command centre that aggregates customer conversations around the web, allowing the company to identify issues, address complaints, gather feedback on products, and quickly react to customer needs.

Obviously a vast majority of B2B companies are nowhere near having this type of capability and are unlikely to get near it any time soon, but it’s definitely a god model to aim for.

Econsultancy

It might seem breathtakingly arrogant to include ourselves on this list, but we’ve previously made an infographic shouting about how good we are so why stop now?

Through the hard work of Econsultancy head of social Matt Owen we’ve managed to clock up more than 130,000 followers and Twitter is now one of our main sources of traffic.

As well as automatically tweeting out our blog posts Matt uses Twitter to monitor conversations about the brand, deal with queries, ask questions about relevant topics, promote our reports and events, and talk about what’s going on in the Econsultancy office.

Ultimately the idea is to use Twitter to both promote our products and interact with our subscribers and other digital marketing folk, which helps to build the brand and raise our profile.

Between 2009 and 2012 our revenue from Twitter increased by 4,091%, albeit from a low base, which shows that we’ve certainly been effective in using Twitter for B2B marketing.

Plus Obama and MC Hammer follow us, which is a ringing endorsement in anyone’s book.

You don’t want to broadcast a one-to-many sales drumbeat in such places. Everyone will tune you out. Get into the many-to-many. And what better way thant to create your own interest group?

LinkedIn is the probably best social medium for connecting with specific networks of decision-makers. That’s why it often looms large in the social marketing of B2B.

So how do you connect with networks of potential clients? Provide a service.

Provide the value of a well hones and moderated LinkedIn Group. Embed yourself at the center of a rich many-to-many discussion,focused on issue you care about, and attracting others who care about them too. The article first appeared on PR 20/20.

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This is an interview Laurel Miltner conducted with Matt Bertuzzi, marketing manager for The Bridge Group, Inc. Matt skillfully grew his 6,700+ member Inside Sales Experts group on LinkedIn… so he knows this topic from inside side.

What exactly is the Inside Sales Experts group?

We launched Inside Sales Experts in early 2008 as a way for Inside Sales practitioners (both individual reps and managers/directors/etc.) to share ideas, seek advice and learn best practices.

To give you some rough numbers, the group more than doubled in membership in 2010. We are adding about 15-30 new members a day and growing 5-8% monthly.

How did you decide on the group’s topic/niche?

I’d like to think our group fills a needed niche for LinkedIn users: a place for like professionals to talk shop, brainstorm and network with others in the Inside Sales community.

Even three years ago, there were already “Sales” and “Marketing” groups formed, but we struggled to find a forum that was targeted to the Inside Sales audience. Rather than try to make do in an existing space, we decided to build our own.

How did you initially gain members?

In the beginning, we invited active and past clients, colleagues, our personal networks, etc. to join.

I have to say that our tactics weren’t what has driven our success. The group has flourished, in my view, because of our approach:

• Building an open, spam-free place to talk shop — first
• Networking and job searching — second
• Self-promotion and spam removed with extreme prejudice

The strategy and tactics just flow naturally from there.

You’re now at more than 6,700 members. How have you continued to grow the group over time?

Tip #1: Leverage members joining and adding the badge to their profile. It is the single best marketing a LinkedIn group needs. Make sure your group badge is about the group, not about your company (e.g. the words “Whizzbang Fans” and not the logo for your company “AcmeCo”). Similarly, make sure that your group description is about the audience, not you (e.g. “for people who really love Whizzbangs” & not “AcmeCo.is leading provider of services to the Whizzbang industry”).

Tip #2: I highly recommend using “thank-you pages” and “thank-you emails” from your corporate website to promote groups. If you already know that a prospect is interested in your space, since they’ve downloaded a piece of your content, why wouldn’t they want access to a community of like professionals? Promote your LinkedIn groups once you’ve established some order of trust and build your LinkedIn group as a corporate asset.

How does your group use the different tabs and functionality LinkedIn offers (Discussions, Promotions, Manager’s Choice, etc.)?

We use the tabs religiously.

• Jobs go in Jobs
• Promotions go in Promotions
• Discussions go in Discussions

Open networking, linking to your webinar and asking for feedback on your blog post is not a discussion — it is promotion. “Discussions” is the heart of our group, and I take its integrity quite seriously.

I believe that this approach delivers the most value to group members. They can be confident that if they have a question, they can post it in discussions and will not be buried under an avalanche of blog posts, open networking, webinar invites and other non-discussion content.

By way of metrics:

• More than 60% of our discussions receive multiple responses.
• We are adding roughly 30 new discussions a month.
• We have two threads that perpetually receive attention (with 73 and 155 comments to date).

What kind of time commitment does it take to effectively manage the group?

We have two people managing the group. Our commitment is to administer 2-3 times daily, between the two of us.

I know that might seem like overkill, but I don’t ever want someone to join and/or log in and find the discussions areas covered in spam and other low-value content. As I said earlier, I take this stuff very seriously. Besides, a few five-minute (max) sessions a day are hardly onerous.

How has your management changed over time?

In the early days, we certainly participated in discussions more actively. We never planted “canned discussions” to fill space, but we would be the first (and sometimes only) responder to member questions.

I am happy to say this is 100% no longer the case. The community serves the community, and we are proud to sit back and jump in only when we can add significant value.

How do you handle off-topic or negative posts within the group?

This too has changed over time. LinkedIn, itself, is constantly changing group functionality. So this requires rethinking and communicating about where people can post the self-promotional material.

In the past, we would email offending members and let them know that the discussion area wasn’t for webinar promotions, job postings, etc. As the group has grown, that has become impossible. Over time we’ve found that 95% of off-topic material is posted by 5% of users.LinkedIn has a magical solution called “Block & Delete,” and it is a group manager’s dream.

Anything else you want to share about LinkedIn group management?

My final comment is a lesson we learned along the way: no one is above the rules. If you know a group member personally and they post something self-promotional, sorry, it has to be moved too.

The ultimate test for how serious any group owner takes this is how they police themselves.Yes, your group is a fantastic corporate asset, but no it isn’t ok to play “do as I say, not as I do.”

Add value at every possible turn and hold yourself to the highest standard and, in my opinion, your group will really stand out on LinkedIn.

Thanks to Matt Bertuzzi for sharing his experience and insight.