5 Blogging Plugins You Must Use

Plugins for the WordPress platform are tons of fun and incredibly useful. You’ll find everything you need to turn your blog into something amazing that is every bit as great as you would have imagined. While there are many plugins out there that are worth your while, the five that follow are the cream of the crop.

Akismet

This plugin actually comes standard with your WordPress installation. You will have to get a WordPress.com API key to make it work, but after you do it’s pure bliss. This will help keep spam comments away automatically! Akismet is smart enough to put suspected spam into a separate folder, and it even learns from you as you go. You should always activate this plugin for the best results with your blog. It saves you a ton of time too!

Related Posts

Linking to different pages in your blog from every page is a great search engine optimization tactic. The problem with blogs is that it can be so hard to dig through old posts that are related and manually link them in your new post. Related posts solves that problem! This will automatically insert some relevant posts for your blog. It’s very hands-off and very effective. Both visitors and search engines love this plugin.

All in One SEO Pack

Once again, optimizing your site for the search engines is going to be one of the best ways you can make money with your blog. The higher you rank, the more traffic you recieve. The more traffic you receive, the more money you make! The All In One SEO pack makes your life easier because it allows you to specify the title, description (that will show up in the search engines), and keywords.

WordPress Database Backup

Backing up your blog is crucial if you value your business. You never know what could happen to your server, and it would be awfully devastating to lose everything. You can easily back everything up by pressing a few

Although blogging can be used for a variety of other purposes such as generating income, promoting a cause and providing information there are many bloggers who enjoy blogging simply because it is fun. These bloggers enjoy blogging for reasons such as staying in touch with friends, expressing themselves or keeping a record of important events. This article will explain how blogs can be used for these purposes.

Blogging to Stay in Touch with Friends

Staying in touch with friends and family members is just one of the many reasons a person may wish to start a blog. This is especially useful for those who move far away from their friends and family members. Staying in touch by phone, regular visits and even email is not always easy. This is because it can be difficult to keep up long distance interactions with several different people at once. However, by maintaining a blog, a person can greatly simplify the process of staying in touch with friends and family members because they do not have to repeat information in individual phone calls or emails or make time to visit several different people.

When maintaining a blog, the individual can choose to post a variety of information and photos. Through this information and photos the blog owner can keep others informed about current events in his life. Friends and family members can view the blog at their convenience to catch up on important events in the blog owner’s life and in most cases can post comments to the blog owner. They can also read comments from others. This is beneficial if those viewing the blog know each other because they can not only stay in touch with the blog owner but also have a chance to communicate with other friends and family members through the comments section of the blog.

Blogging as a Form of Expression

Some bloggers begin blogging as a form of expression. They may right poetry, songs, short stories or even use the blog to vent about personal events or politics. These bloggers may wish to keep their blog private or can make the blog available to the public. Keeping the blog private is sort of like keeping a diary or a journal. It gives the blogger a multi-media form of expressing himself without the risk of others discovering his true feelings, innermost dreams or frustrations. Other bloggers opt to make these blogs public. This may be for a number of different reasons. Sharing these feelings with others allows the blogger to reach others who may have the same interest as the blogger.

Bloggers who use their blog as a form of personal expression may want to be cautious and consider the decision to make a blog public. This is important because the blog owner may initially not see problems with allowing others to view his personal thoughts. However, over time he may realize his blog could either be offensive to others or could result in problems if friends or family members view the blog.

Blogging to Keep a Record of Events

Another common reason for blogging is to keep a record of important events. Examples of some types of events which a blogger may wish to document include a pregnancy, weddings, vacations, sporting events or completion of school events. Using blogs to keep a record of these events gives the blogger an opportunity to record daily events in one simple location where they can easily look back on the blog or share the postings with others who might be interested in the events. In these cases the blog can serve as a form of scrapbook documenting the events as they occur. The blog owner can post as often as he desires and may choose to include elements such as photos, music, audio files and video files into the blog. The blog can also be designed to suit the events being documented. For example a journal depicting a vacation may have backgrounds, fonts and colors representing the vacation location while a pregnancy blog may feature elements which represent pregnancy, babies and being parents.

So you have this really great idea to start a blog on a particular niche. And perhaps, maybe you even want to make some revenue off of AdSense, Clicksor, or other contextual advertising. Super. You’ve wrote your heart out and posted some blog content. Great! No problems there. But what do you do to keep the content fresh and insightful? Are you feeling that the content you offer on your blog just “lacks”? Is your blog boring? Maybe you can’t even pinpoint what exactly is “lacking”, but you just feel it. Possibly, you just do not have the time to put forth to writing 1000 word articles every couple days. If this is you, it is time you look into using other people’s articles! Read the rest of this entry »

One of the challenges of blogging is to come up with good posts that interest readers and keep them coming back. Sometimes I do not feel like I have good original wisdom. It is presumptuous to think I can have top quality original material all the time.

A second challenge is the time to blog. I run a $1 Billion dollar company so when I decided to blog I knew I needed to figure out how to do it efficiently. My blog is mostly about efficiency and time management; these are topics I study.

These two challenges can be solved with a simple concept. Copy.

Ideas to use when copying are:

1 – attribution. Give the credit together with the link to the original author.

2 – look for something you can add to. Blogs can be synergistic. Take a concept or part of a blog post and expend on it and give your opinions, insights or views. In many cases, this can start a flow of ideas that are enriched from the original post.

3 – You can use either the whole post or most usually just part of it and point people to the original.

4 – I usually ask for permission which has never been denied. After all copying helps the original author and garners them some readership. And of course never copy copy written material without permission (and most blogs are not copy written).

5 – The simplest place to find material to use to copy is by blog surfing although this can mean a lot of irrelevant material to filter. One source of free articles sorted by topic is www.isnare.com.

6 – In many cases the person you copy from will point a link back to you since it is flattering to them. Charles Caleb Colton said “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” (one trick on quotes is to look them up on www.brainyquote.com). These links to you can increase your traffic.

In summary, copying saves time and increases the quality of material on your site. It can even lead to traffic since in many cases you will get link backs from the original site.

Many clients ask me how to drive more traffic to their blogs. By now you have probably heard that blogs are an excellent resource to get leads as well as clients for your business. The best way to do that is by creating search engine friendly blog posts that get indexed in search engines. When people search for information on topics you discuss in your blog it appears on the search engine result pages. Potential customers then are able to read what you have to say and get on your mailing list.

So now it all boils down to techniques that help you effectively optimize your blog for search engines. Here are tips and ideas to do just that: Read the rest of this entry »