January 23rd, 2012 — Plugins, Readership, Web Traffic
WordPress specifically has a number of plug-ins for blogging that will allow you to attract more readers to your blog. Some of the best blog plug-ins for increasing traffic to come in three main categories:
- Social networking and bookmarking
- Posting across many different platforms
- RSS feed helpers
BTE Related Websites: For WordPress users the best way to get traffic is to use the plugin that I developed called Related Websites. The more bloggers that use this plugin, the stronger the whole system is. To get your links to show up on relevant posts, you must join and become a full member. This quality control is completely humanized so that the system is never compromised. You get strong related links for your site and in addition are linked to from other sites. What are you waiting for?
RSS Feeds: Lots of people prefer to read blogs in feeds rather than having to visit several different blog sites per day. This doesn’t actually get them coming through as traffic, but they read the post and will follow links and other such information. If you don’t have your blog available as a feed, then you’re missing out on those readers who prefer feeds over surfing to your blog regularly.
Some of the more popular WordPress plug-ins for RSS feeds do different things. Some are designed to allow you to add a copyright to your posts like ©Feed, which also “fingerprints” your feed so you can search for plagiarists who are duplicating your content. Feed Footer lets you copyright as well, and also lets you add advertising in the footer of your feeds.
The type of plug-in that lets you use ads is great for those into monetizing their blogs and can help offset the loss of clicks or advertiser revenue by adding it to the feed. Feedvertiser lets you place ads in your feed, as well. Feed Control lets you exclude certain posts from the feed, while Better Feed lets you ad the © notice, a del.icio.us link and a “read more” link to lead people to your blog.
Feedstats lets you see the stats on your feeds, and SlashComment adds a little note to the end of the feeds about the number of comments on the post.
Social Bookmarking: For social bookmarking and networking within your blog, the one of the best plug-ins is called Share This. Unlike many other plug-ins that will let you social bookmark at Digg, Reddit or del.icio.us, Share This create a drop-down box where the reader can choose from about 14 of the most popular Social Bookmarking sites online. The Social plug-in, however, has the record for offering 61 social bookmarking links to your reader.
The RSS Flashfeeder to MySpace combines the RSS feed help with social networking, by letting you send the last two posts of your feed directly to your MySpace page.
Crossposting: These plug-ins let you make a post in your WordPress blog and recreate in your other blogs without having to copy and paste. One plug-in, Dj-Email-Publish, sends your new post by email to many or your other blogs, like those on MSN.
For those with blogs at popular sites LiveJournal, Vox and Xanga, each has a separate crossover plug-in that allows the content in your WordPress blog to be automatically cross-posted to that other blog. Live Space Sync lets you send your content to all the contacts you have in Microsoft Live.
Getting the word out about your new post is made much easier by using these handy blog plug-ins.
Photo Credits: 416style
Originally posted 2009-05-29 05:26:46. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
January 23rd, 2012 — Blog Tips, Blogging, Writing for Your Blog
Whether your blog is about general interest topics like how you washed a crayon in your son’s pocket and there’s a new bank going up in town, or you have a niche blog designed to make money, the same basic blogging strategies apply if you want to be a top blogger.
Post Regularly: You don’t have to post every day. But if you can, do it. Post every other day or 3 or 4 times a week. The more regularly you post (especially if you have good SEO optimized titles) the better your blog will look to the search engines.
Post In-Depth: If you post every day and you’re not fond of writing, this might be difficult. But maybe you can do it twice a week, or even once, and have shorter posts the rest of the time. If your post is long and full of information that almost always makes it better than a short post. First, it’ll contain more keywords and probably help your search engine listings. Second, it’ll contain more information that might lead others to different parts of your blog if you’re linking correctly. And finally, a long post just gives you more space in which to connect with your reader.
Post for the Readers: Search engine optimization is important if you want people to be able to find you through search engines. But if your blog post reads like it was written for a keyword-searching bot, the reader will know it. Make sure you write for those real people who will be reading the post, not just for the search engine spiders.
Connect with your Readers: While it’s important to write for them by including actual content and not just sentence after sentence stuffed with keywords, you still have to engage them. If the contest interesting but written in a wholly uninteresting way, readers aren’t going to be that thrilled. If you’re worked up about the idea of writing, just decide to write like you speak. This isn’t a legal document or a literary publication submission. If your language is pompous sounding, you’ll put people off. Just write in a manner like you speak, and leave the formal language to lawyers and people from the 18th century.
Rein in Your Sales Message: If you’re using a blog to sell something, it’s okay to sell it. You can point it out to people, talk about it, hype it up a little. But you can’t do that all the time. If every post is touting the benefits of your new product, then there’s not much point in people coming back unless they’re already interesting in your product. People interested in your general subject will go elsewhere.
Don’t fill your posts with fluff and then try to sell to people on your blog. If you’re selling an e-book about 100 rainmaking techniques, offer up 3 in a blog post and then lead them to your ebook.
Keeping the readers and their needs in your mind is the key in all the best and most successful blogging strategies.
Photo Credits: Waponi
Originally posted 2009-05-27 05:22:53. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
January 21st, 2012 — Blog Tips, Blogging, Content Ideas, Guest Blogger, Writing for Your Blog
Yesterday, I introduced the 2 Year Blogging Curse. Today let’s look at some ways to break what seems to afflict so many new and established bloggers.
Cut Back.
Who says you have to blog every day? If 365 fresh posts sounds scary know that you can make whatever posting schedule you like. Here are some other schedules to consider:
- Blog M-F for a workable 261 posts.
- Blog every other day for a comfortable 182 posts.
- Blog M-W-F for a stress-free 156 posts.
- Blog Tu & Th for an easy 104 posts.
- Blog Weekly for a painless 52 posts.
- Blog Monthly for an effortless 12 posts.
Write Less.
What’s the magical word count to get the mighty Google search engine to notice you? I’ve no idea. I have heard anywhere from 500 words to as little as 250 words. It seems more myth than truth to me.
So if you’re used to writing long in-depth articles why not scale back and pull a Seth Godin? His blog posts are notable for being short, concise, and thought provoking. You can do the same.
365 posts at 500 words a post is 182,500 words in a year, but 365 posts at 80 words a post is a manageable 29,200 words.
Get a New Angle.
If the current way you’re blogging bores you, it probably bores your readers, but quitting isn’t the answer. Just think about it. Quitting an old blog and starting a new, negates all your previous efforts. Who wants to lose 182,500 or more words on a subject? I wouldn’t. That would be so depressing. Instead of chugging away at the same old same old, come at your topic from a different angle.
Tomorrow I’ll go over three more ideas to help you break the 2 Year Blogging Curse.
Keira hails from Love Romance Passion, a site known for it’s romance novel reviews. She’s a longtime romance reader, a Kindle 2 owner, and a junkie for USA TV shows. She loves marriage of convenience plots and angst ridden breakups that ultimately end up in gooey happily ever afters. You can also find her on Twitter.
Photo Credits: Magda Sobkowiak
Originally posted 2010-09-22 03:27:02. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
January 20th, 2012 — Blog Tips, Blogging, Content Ideas, Guest Blogger, OPP, Writing for Your Blog
We’ve talked about what the 2 Year Blogging Curse is and covered some ways to break it, now we’ll go over some more ways to do just that.
Target a New Audience.
If you started out concentrating on beginners in your niche because you yourself were a beginning but now you’ve moved past that stage, you should be writing about intermediary or advance topics. By challenging yourself to expand or to learn you’ll be creating new content that is much more interesting to you and your long time readers while still attracting those beginning in your niche.
OPP is a WordPress plugin by BTE. The concept behind this plugin is to promote old posts back to the front of your blog allowing you to cash in again on work you’ve done already. It’s perfect for going on vacation, to run permanently, or to use while you’re recuperating from being blogged out. Sure, some of your readers may have seen the articles before, but it’ll be fresh in the search engines and to new readers.
Fresh Voices.
There are several ways to get new voices. You could advertise for guest bloggers, befriend and reach out to commentators on your blog behind the scenes, hire a writer, read or watch new programs/blogs for new input, get a friend to share their thoughts, and more.
Check back in tomorrow as I am going to cover four more ideas to help you break the 2 Year Blogging Curse.
Keira hails from Love Romance Passion, a site known for it’s romance novel reviews. She’s a longtime romance reader, a Kindle 2 owner, and a junkie for USA TV shows. She loves marriage of convenience plots and angst ridden breakups that ultimately end up in gooey happily ever afters. You can also find her on Twitter.
Photo Credits: Magda Sobkowiak
Originally posted 2010-09-23 03:29:51. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
January 19th, 2012 — Blog Tips, Blogging, Guest Blogger, Writing for Your Blog
Have you ever noticed how many people talk about a blog that they used to write? It seems like I hear about it at least once a week and the story reads basically the same every time I see it:
They were interested in blogging, liked a topic, and went for it only to discover that they hated writing on said topic, couldn’t keep focused, found out it wasn’t as fun as they thought and quit the blog after a year or two of perseverance.
Pretty sad isn’t it? Not every blog can explode and be a star on the map in the first year. Many don’t even make that status in their second year. It’s year three and on that those who acted like the tortoise in this so-called blogging race start to really see results.
When you see who it affected, you know you’re not alone. Even the Darren of Problogger experienced it for different reasons in the past. John Marrow talks about knowing when to shoot your blog, but I want to take the opposite approach and focus on breaking the 2 Year Blogging Curse, not perpetuating it. Tune in tomorrow for the first of a 3 part series on doing just that.
In the meantime, why don’t you introduce yourself and share a little bit about your blog and how you’re feeling about it right now in the comment space below. Are you happy where you are or are you feeling disappointed? If you’re the latter be sure to stick around this week.
Keira hails from Love Romance Passion, a site known for it’s romance novel reviews. She’s a longtime romance reader, a Kindle 2 owner, and a junkie for USA TV shows. She loves marriage of convenience plots and angst ridden breakups that ultimately end up in gooey happily ever afters. You can also find her on Twitter.
Photo Credits: Magda Sobkowiak
Originally posted 2010-09-21 03:03:34. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
