Why Influencers Need a WordPress Site

If you’re a social media influencer, you’re no stranger to creating engaging content. You’ve built a loyal following that’s excited about what you have to say. Now’s the perfect time to expand and protect that audience with your own website. 

Benefits of a website for influencers

You may be familiar and successful with one or two social media platforms. Why change what you’re doing? Your own website allows you to:

• Fully own and protect your content. You spend a lot of time creating posts, images, videos, recipes, or podcasts and that content is the foundation of your business. But social media platforms can deactivate your account or remove any of your posts if they determine (at their own discretion) that you’re violating their terms and conditions. Your website, however, isn’t dependent on the decisions of third parties — your content is only deleted if you delete it yourself. 
• Have full control over your following. While social media is an excellent way to reach and connect with your audience, you have very little control over who sees your posts. At any point, Facebook or Instagram could change their algorithms and the strategy that’s worked for you so far won’t be the right one anymore. On your website, you can capture email addresses and reach your subscribers via email, where you know your content will land in their inbox.
• Have flexibility around your design, branding, and content. On social media, you’re limited by photo size, word count, and layout. On Instagram, your photos will always be square and on Facebook, your profile photo will always be round. The platform logo and colors will always be on the page. But you can build your site however you’d like — use any colors, fonts, style, or design. Feature rich photo galleries. Write long blog posts. The sky’s the limit!
• Expand your influence to other areas. You may be making money from social media now, but your other opportunities are somewhat limited. With a website, however, you can generate money from advertising, sponsored content, services, courses, products — whatever you feel like adding to your brand. 
• Reach a larger audience. With a website, you can create content that’s optimized for search engines. This helps you show up higher in search engine rankings, so you’re visible to an entirely new audience, one that’s specifically looking for what you have to say. Read how interior design influencer, Kylie M., uses a website with great content and powerful search engine optimization, to get 50,000 page views a day. 
• Avoid distractions and competing content. When one of your followers views your posts on social media, there are nearly endless distractions vying for their attention — advertisements, posts from competitors, messages from friends, and even cat videos. On your site, you have much more control over what they view on the screen and can more easily keep them from going elsewhere.

Why build a website with WordPress

Now that you know why a website is important, you need to decide how to build one. WordPress is the leading website building tool, powering nearly 40% of the web. It was designed specifically for content creators and makes it possible for non-developers to create a beautiful, effective site. Here are just a few of the other benefits:

• It’s affordable to get started. WordPress itself is completely free. All you need is a domain name (the URL someone will type to access your site) and a host (a company that stores your site files and makes them publicly viewable.) Domain names typically cost around $14/yr and hosting costs around $7.99/mo.  If you’re looking for the simplest way to start a WordPress site, check out WordPress.com.
• You can choose from tons of themes. Themes define the design and layout of your site. There are thousands of free and paid options, many of which are specifically designed for travel, fashion, or food influencers. You’re sure to find a style that you love.
• It was built for content. WordPress was originally created as a publishing system, and that passion for high-quality content is still at its core. You can seamlessly add blog posts, videos, podcasts, recipes, images, and more.
• You can create pages and posts without code. Don’t worry about learning a single line of code! The WordPress block editor lets you add text, images, buttons, galleries, videos, tables, and more just by clicking a few buttons. Drag and drop these elements (called blocks) to create any layout you’d like.
• Use plugins to extend functionality. A WordPress plugin adds functionality and features to your website, making it possible to build virtually anything. Enhance your comment system, add quizzes or polls, display a calendar of events…the options are endless. 
• The WordPress community is unrivaled. WordPress is developed by a large group of contributors who are truly passionate about helping everyone be successful. Those contributors — along with thousands of other people who use WordPress — develop plugins, provide guidance, and work together to better the web. If you ever need help, it’s readily available in support forums, meetups, and Facebook groups. 

Amplify your website with Jetpack

Jetpack is the ultimate WordPress toolkit, providing everything you need to amplify your marketing, security, and design in one place. There are both free and paid plans available, along with unrivaled support. 

Create engaging content

Your followers value your content — they watch it, read it, listen to it, and incorporate it into their daily lives. Make it as engaging as possible so you can keep existing followers interested. Jetpack provides tools that add the following to your site:

• Tiled galleries: Add beautiful galleries to pages and posts. Showcase your favorite outfits, pictures from your vacation, or top recipes.
• Slideshows: Grab attention with slideshows that feature the best of your images.
• Podcast players: Embed recent podcast episodes directly into pages and posts. Existing followers will have another way to listen and you may gain new subscribers as well. 
• Pinterest boards: Add boards and pins from your Pinterest account into posts. If you’re writing about fall fashion ideas, add your board with sweaters and boots. If you’re sharing a cupcake recipe, add your board with dessert ideas.
• Related posts: Automatically share related topics so that site visitors can keep reading what they’re interested in. For example, if your post is about a kids’ nature scavenger hunt, readers may also like one about leaf crafts.
• Instagram posts: Display your latest images on your site. Add them to the bottom of pages to drive more traffic to your Instagram account.

Reach new and existing followers

Even though you have a great audience, you always want to expand. Jetpack helps you connect with existing followers, reach new people, and turn them into loyal readers. 

• Subscription forms: Collect email addresses in exchange for free content or updates. Jetpack offers several ways to do this — use the Subscription block to simply notify followers of new posts or the Creative Mail integration to send emails right from your dashboard.
• Social share buttons: Add buttons to your blog posts so readers can easily share to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and more. This is a great way to expand your audience.
• Automated social media publishing: With a paid plan, you can automatically share new blog posts to your social media accounts and re-share your most popular content.

Improve your site experience

An easy-to-use website experience keeps followers coming back and even improves your search engine rankings. Jetpack helps by offering the following free and paid features:

• Search tools: Make it easy for readers to find exactly what they’re looking for on your site. Add powerful filters that help them drill down to a specific post and prioritize your most important content.
• Video hosting: Add videos to your site without the ads and competing content that come with services like YouTube. Load them quickly, so site visitors don’t have to deal with frustrating buffering.
• Speed optimization tools: If your website doesn’t load quickly, visitors might leave and go to someone else’s blog. Prevent that by putting the proper speed measures in place.
• Security features: Protect your site (and followers!) from intruders with an entire suite of security tools. If anything ever does go wrong, restore a backup to get your site back to normal quickly. 
• Spam protection: Get rid of unwanted comments that negatively affect your reputation and put your followers at risk.

Generate revenue

If you want to generate more revenue and expand what you offer to followers, Jetpack has everything you need. 

• Ad program: Display high-quality, relevant ads on your site and make money off of each click.
• Payment tools: Accept one-time or recurring payments for consultations, appearances, events, or products.
• eCommerce: Want to sell your own line of clothing, cookbooks, or makeup? Use Jetpack with WooCommerce to create an online store that’s completely customizable and can grow with you.   

Expand your influence with WordPress and Jetpack 

As an influencer, you understand the importance of quality content and an engaged following. Building your own website is the perfect way to create great resources for your audience, have full control over your brand, generate more revenue, and reach new people. 

WordPress and Jetpack are here to help you create a beautiful, customized website that’s effective, secure, and easy to use. The best part? You’ll get support from an entire community of people that want you to be successful.

Get started with WordPress and Jetpack.

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