An open-source development tool, meaning the WordPress developers allow others to access their source code and update it, along with developing other applications that give WordPress even more functionality. It also means WordPress is free. WordPress is the most popular blogging & website development tool in use today, and because of that, you find many more people who develop applications for it, support it, and can help you when you get stuck using it. WordPress also offers documentation (they call it a codex), along with support forums.
WordPress also realizes most users are not programmers or developers, and we don’t know how to code. Other blog tools require you to know HTML or CSS to make simple changes. Blogs are small websites that you update more frequently – usually once per week – which is terrific for your business, because search engines like Google and Bing reward you for having “fresh” content. A normal website is static: it doesn’t change often, and search engines penalize those for being outdated. A blog increases the likelihood your business will be found online because search engines rank blog posts higher than normal website content.
WORDPRESS BASICS
You can create a WordPress blog connected to your site, or have it separate from it.
WordPress Questions:
- Will your blog be your main website or are you adding a blog onto your existing website?
- What do you want to accomplish by having a blog/website?
- Who are your customers, and what will they expect from your blog/website? Do you know how to deliver that?
- Will your focus be on B2B or B2C? Or both?
- Do you know what you’ll post? Will it mostly be text, photos, video, or a combination? Where will you get that content?
- How often do you plan on posting?
- What are the blogs you read and enjoy the most? What is it that you like about those?
WordPress.org allows you to have a more robust blog, with your own domain name and more features. You can also install plugins, each of which extends the functionality of your blog. For example, if you want to offer an online store, display a video or slideshow on your sidebar, you need a plugin. The downside to using WordPress.org is that you are responsible for hosting your blog on a server, which means you must purchase a web hosting service, install the software, backup, and upgrade WordPress yourself.
WordPress.com is hosted by Automattic, the WordPress parent company, and they upgrade and backup your blog for you. Nice, but for enough for a business blog. They also run advertisements on your blog and you are not allowed to install plugins, which severely limits what you can do with it. WordPress.com is more for personal use.
WordPress is an app that lives in the cloud (or online). It doesn’t get stored on your hard drive. So you need to hire a hosting company that can provide storage space where your WordPress website will stay, or be “hosted.” Bluehost.com offers excellent customer support and are quite helpful when you have a question or things go wrong. (I’m not an affiliate). Using a program called Simple Scripts, you can simply click one button, tell SS the username and password you want to use, and where to install WordPress on your server, and voila!
BLOGGING
A business blog is a collection of articles that provide helpful, valuable, educational, and remarkable content to your audience. You can write about long-tail keywords, recent industry related-news, common questions from your customers, respond to blog comments or other blogs, go negative or positive, invite guest bloggers, or even reuse and recycle your blog posts. Identify your top-performing outdated posts. Keep the URL and keywords the same, but change the title and update the content for accuracy. Have a compelling blog title by making it actionable, keyword-conscious, brief, clear, definitive, and intriguing. You can add a CTA to the blog sidebar, in-text links, or to the bottom of each post you write.
You can drive traffic to your blog articles by adding a blog RSS feed to your homepage and “About” pages. Link internally to relevant content and use a blog sidebar to promote popular/recent posts. You can also use email marketing to segment leads and send relevant posts to them. Finally, try public relations strategies like a monthly blog digest email, newsletter, or a press release. Have your blog articles added to a “resource center” and make sure your blog is linked to your signature.
SEO BEST PRACTICES FOR BLOGGING:
- Keyword (55 Characters)
- Meta Description (140 Characters)
- The image file name and Alt Tags
- Links and Anchor Text
- Mobile Optimization
- Other Blog Elements
ANALYZE BLOG ARTICLE RESULTS:
- Number of article views
- Blog subscription growth
- Most popular articles (author, content, channel)
- Number of inbound links
You can easily fix your business blogging mistakes with this Hubspot ebook Easy Fixes. Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator and how to think up a year’s worth of blog posts article are awesome tools for helping you create fantastic blog titles. You can create more blog topics
TOOLS TO MANAGE YOUR BLOG
- Disqus: Helpful in attracting more comments on your blog or website. It allows readers to include media such as YouTube videos in their comments, receive alerts when their posts have been responded to, and reply directly from their email.
- Janrain: Allows visitors to your site to easily share your content across their social networks. Lets visitors sign in to your site with their Facebook, Twitter, or other social accounts and tracks their behavior to help you provide a personalized experience for each visitor. Best for companies with a large website presence, Janrain allows visitors to your site to easily share your content across their social networks. Janrain also lets visitors sign in to your site with their Facebook, Twitter or other social accounts and tracks their behavior to help you provide a personalized experience for each visitor.
- Feedburner: Allows you to see how effective your blog is at marketing your brand and see how you stack up against other blogs out there.
- Google Analytics: Provides invaluable insight into which social media channels are driving traffic to your website. Though Google Analytics isn’t specifically for social media, it can provide valuable insights into which social media channels are driving traffic to your site.
- Awareness Social Marketing Hub: Aggregates social network information, the Hub allows marketers to set up workflows in order to coordinate efforts across a marketing team.
- Syncapse SocialTalk: Helps you control your presence across different platforms, manage multiple social media accounts from one platform, establish multiple user access levels, and monitor incoming traffic.
- Facebook Comment Plug-In for WordPress!
- Marketing Grader: HubSpot’s Marketing Grader is a free tool that allows you to see how well your website promotes your organization across the web. It provides an overall grade along with more than a dozen suggestions and tips on how to improve the performance of your website and social media channels.
- FeedBurner: Though typical website analytics packages do not provide any analytics on who is interacting with your RSS feed, Feedburner allows you to see who is accessing your content and what they are clicking on.
- Twitterfeed: What’s the point of blogging if no one knows about it? This tool monitors your RSS feed and updates your Facebook and Twitter accounts when you have a new blog post.
- Lead Capture: RSS Feed, Newsletter sign up, site registration, and landing pages.
- Watermark Pinterest photos and pin your blog articles.
- 14. #BlogChat: One of the largest Twitter chats, this one has an impressive lineup of social media, content marketing, and small-business experts Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.