Aug

18

2 More Excellent Wordpress Plugins

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In our continuing efforts to make our Wordpress blogs more useful, and even indispensable, to our readers we are constantly on the lookout for plugins that help us to achieve that goal. Here are two more valuable plugins for your Wordpress blogs.

Add Related Posts to your Feeds: When a subscribed reader gets a list of your newest posts in his or her feed, they will typically read them if the tpics interest them. Then they go elsewhere. What if you could show them a brief list of other posts that are related to the one they just read? Chances are they will click on at least one of them and be back to your site.

Ultimate Tag Warrior: A great optimization plugin in its own right, but also necessary for the previously mentioned plugin to work.

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Aug

15

Feeds: Full or Partial Text?

Filed Under Lessons, Tips | Leave a Comment

There are many blogging tips that successful bloggers swear by. This is not a problem for those who want to learn from the masters until they contradict one another. And this happens more often than you would think. One such duo of discrepant tips concerns the question of offering full- or partial-text feeds.

Some bloggers insist that you should offer partial-text feeds in order to entice (some might say “force”) readers to come to your blog to get the full story. You will not get traffic coming to your blog if readers can get it all from your feed, or so the thinking goes. I think that is a valid point. On the other hand…

Readers can get ticked off and unsubscribe to your feed altogether if they feel manipulated into visiting your blog. Also a valid point.

The question then becomes, which is more important to your long-run success? Blog traffic, or faithful readers? Weighing all aspects of the issue, I come down on the side of giving my readers the full story right up front. It seems to me that faithful readers will bring me more success in the long-run, and treating them with respect is more likely to result in developing trust and loyalty. That’s what I’m banking on.

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Aug

13

Build Traffic with Quality and Consistency

Filed Under Lessons | Leave a Comment

There are countless blogs out there that begin with a flurry of activity, postings aplenty and passion out the wazoo, only to burn out and lie dormant within weeks of their birth. Then there are the ones that hang in there, but produce content in spurts, on a schedule that has meaning only to the posters. When they are giving milk, there are gallons available, but when they are dry, we go thirsty and search elsewhere for our nourishment.

These are not the blogs that enjoy long-run success and build loyal readerships that number in the thousands or more. The blogs that do that are special. They have two qualities that bear scrutiny and imitation: Quality and Consistency.

Quality is what separates the exceptional from the average. It is not always easy to define, especially in terms of blog postings, but one senses its presence when it is there. There is a sense that the author put something of value into the post, that it cost them something. They took some time with it. One senses that they are discriminating in their choices of subject matter. They have rejected the low-hanging fruit and climbed high into the tree to bring you useful information. The quality of their posts means that you will almost always get something you can use, and so you return again and again. And you tell your friends about the source of your new-found wisdom.

Consistency means that you can count on fresh content on some sort of regular schedule. Sometimes it’s daily. Sometimes it’s weekly. But you know that when you come back, there will be something new and helpful there. Over time, this keeps and adds readers, until they are a veritable horde. Which is good.

So if you want to make a quick buck online, blogging is not what you’re looking for. If you have something of value to share, and you are willing to share it consistently, then time is on your side and you will be a long run success. Hope to see you there!

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