WordPress is a powerful and easy-to-use content management system for financial advisors and financial firms to publish their thought leadership insights and get found by their target markets. In this post I'll cover 7 reasons why WordPress is indeed your best option.

First, if you encounter a web design or development company that relies on a proprietary (closed) website platform or system, that is the exact point you should turn and walk away. When it comes to building a scalable and functional online content management system that will benefit your bottom line, nothing beats the open source, flexible, and powerful WordPress platform.

Building your professional content management system on WordPress will provide you with an immediate advantage over competitors who use proprietary content management systems.

Here's why:

1. It's Intuitive

WordPress has been developed as a platform for the masses -- its developers focus on the concepts of usability and intuitiveness. So although it offers a great deal of power, that power does not come packaged in an incomprehensible interface.

The learning curve for new WordPress users is extremely gentle, and with a little guidance, you will be finding your way around with no difficulty. This means that you can spend more time on developing your content and your online presence, and less time trying to work out how to use the software.

2. It's Open Source

Proprietary content management systems are typically developed by a small team (or maybe even one person). The core WordPress development team can tap into the expertise, knowledge, and input of literally millions of people. This method of crowdsourcing results in a product that truly reflects the market's needs.

Being an open source tool also makes WordPress a more cost effective solution for both the design and development of your site. This is due to the enormous size and collective knowledge of the community, as well as the tremendous repository of support and resources that exist online for WordPress.

3. It's Built for Content Marketing

Creating irresistible content for your ideal clients is critical to attracting leads into your business and building a successful digital presence. WordPress was primarily developed as a blogging platform to make it easy for anyone to be a publisher. Almost all of the established bloggers use WordPress as their engine for publishing and showcasing their thought leadership content.

The concept of content marketing -- of reaching new prospective clients through online media -- is built into WordPress' DNA. The core functionality of WordPress is aligned with the goal of establishing yourself as the visible expert with existing and new clients. The same cannot be said of many proprietary systems.

4. Endless Design Options

When it comes to designing a great-looking site, WordPress has no barriers. You can either have a custom blog and website design created for your site, or, if you don't have the budget for a custom design there are thousands of pre-designed themes that have already been developed for WordPress.

For example, at Wired Advisor we've developed our own WordPress Theme for financial advisors and financial firms that integrates highly relevant WordPress features and functionality for increasing visibility and cultivating trusted relationships with your target audience.

Developing a unique "marketing theme" that your blog can be designed around is also critical. Your marketing theme encompasses your brand messaging and positioning, and it will help drive the design and content strategy of your WordPress platform.

5. Extensibility

Continuing along the same lines, if you have a specific functionality requirement, I can almost guarantee that WordPress has a solution. The WordPress.org Free Plugins Repository contains over 21,000 plugins alone, each of which can bring extra functionality to your site.

With so many developers building extended features and functionality for WordPress, any proprietary website software offering is going to have a difficult time keeping up. If there is a feature or functionality you are looking to integrate into your WordPress site, chances are it's available!

It's important to note that with the hosted version of WordPress (WordPress.com) you are unable to install and take advantage of plugins. You will want to make sure you are using the self-hosted version of WordPress (WordPress.org) for your site.

With thousands of developers creating tens of thousands of plugins, proprietary systems simply do not have a hope of keeping up.

6. Great SEO

WordPress is built with SEO in mind. When you hit publish, you can rest assured in knowing that out of the box your post or page is optimized for rankings in the major search engines.

There are also very powerful paid SEO plugins such as Scribe SEO (this is an affiliate link) that will allow you to optimize each and every post on your site. You can conduct keyword research and customize your meta titles and descriptions for every page and post you have created. You can also research link building opportunities from within and outside of your site.

7. Social Media & Email Integration

You probably recognize by now that social media has become a very powerful force for building relationships and impacting your business! With that in mind, you know that you should do all that is possible to ensure full integration between your content management system, and the major social media platforms you rely on for building your community.

Fortunately, WordPress has you covered from every single angle. You can automatically share your blog posts with your community on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You can also add customized social sharing buttons to your content, and showcase your own social media profiles throughout your site.

Are you using an email platform such as MailChimp or Constant Contact to send email newsletters to your contacts? If not, you should seriously consider doing so. Both of these email platforms integrate beautifully with WordPress allowing you to capture leads on your site and send automated updates of every new post you publish to your list!

The tight and seamless integration between WordPress, popular social networks, and email platforms can expand your reach exponentially like no proprietary solution can.

If you're a financial advisor or member of a financial firm and haven't considered WordPress as the core option for building your online foundation, I highly recommend that you consider doing so. These 7 reasons should help you in understanding the value of how this powerful software can help you grow your digital presence! Questions or comments?

Published at Stephanie Sammon's Wired Advisor originally. You can find Stephanie on Google+