Our OM4Business sites already run Bad Behavior, and with an Akismet key you can activate Akismet. But for many business sites, the fact Akismet requires a monthly subscription is clearly a barrier.

So we have created a new plugin that requires completion of a simple maths question (what is four plus two?) to:

• lodge a comment on a blog post
• send a message via a contact form

The immediate results we have seen are very positive, with a dramatic reduction in spam comments reported.

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OM4Business gets some special plugins

Our business was the very first paying client to use the OM4 platform (then called Publicityship). Paul (my brother, and business partner) was keen, but I was sceptical that a small business like ours really justified a site like this. I was pretty sure we already had all the local market – how wrong I was!

We used to have a pretty stagnant site that didn’t rate in any of the internet searches. People just couldn’t find us. OM4 has put us where people could find us and to our surprise the market was much bigger than we imagined.

The site has increased our professional standing with our clients, with the doctors and hospitals who refer to us and with the media who call us for information.

We use an additional OM4 content service to help with our regular blog posts. We get lots of ideas but we don’t have the time to get them down. Janet calls us once a week and we give her our ideas. She crafts these into a coherent post and emails it back. Paul and I will do a quick edit to get it just the way we want and then we publish the post on our site.

These regular posts keep the site feeling fresh, assist our page rank in the search engines and help us produce valuable resources for our clients.

At the beginning we had so little written down about what we do. The practice of blogging has created valuable resources we refer to all the time. People can now find us and see our picture and read our blog. They trust us before they walk in the door.

Our clients used to be scared when they first came – these days we see a lot less of that. The website has already communicated that we are caring people who can make a good looking eye.

We like having OM4 looking after our site. It takes very little effort from us and our turnover has doubled. We can concentrate on our business and keeping up with the increased demand the site has generated.

I’ve moved from sceptic to evangelist. These days I talk about our great website to strangers on plane trips.

I want every business to have one.

Notes: you can find Paul and Jenny’s website here. And a case study on their overall business changes here in The Online Ocularist.

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Should a small business consider a content marketing website? Jenny Geelen, Ocularist

OM4Business offers you a blog-enabled website with zero setup cost and zero ongoing hosting costs.

Here is one of our early client sites: Room4Development

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Launching OM4Business.com