Breakthrough Blogging – Part 3
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Part 3 of a 12 Part Series- Blogging for leveraged web marketing and clever customer relationship management.The following information is an extract from The ‘120 DAYS TO $120K’ Web Entrepreneur Success Program created and presented by Jennie Armato. |
Welcome to Part 3. In Part 2 I outlined why you want to use the WordPress Platform to create and build your blog – on your own website. Other platforms do not have the same options and capabilities as a wordpress blog on your own website. From this Part onwwards, all features and benefits pertain to you have a wordpress blog on your own website.
What Key Features Must I Have On My Blog?
- Blog Key Features continued
Following is an essential element of making your blog function effectively and efficiently – creating content and connection with your marketplace. Today we will cover the blog key feature known as Plug-Ins.
- Plug-ins (Installed, Configured and Activated) enhance and ‘empower’ your basic wordpress blog shell.
Plugins can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine. In the directory you can find, download, rate, and comment on all the best plugins the WordPress community has to offer. For instance, the ”Share” buttons on this blog post is a plugin. It was installed, configured and activated on the basic wordpress blog that this site started out as.
Watch this video to see HOW to add a plugin to your wordpress blog (note I am installing a plugin listed below that we recommend you have on your blog if you wish to maximize it’s power – effective, efficient and connecting with your marketplace.
(In case you could not view the video on this page, here is the link: http://www.screencast.com/t/2UkjKEsIZ
Here are some basic plugins that are essential to have on a wordpress blog on your own website.
PLEASE NOTE: Using plug ins is a 3 step process: 1) Installation 2) Activation 3) Configuration. There are five plug-ins in the following list that are not free. There is a very good reason you want to pay for these. They are plug-ins that distinguish your site from others because they include powerful attributes you will not get from the ones that are free.
Key WordPress plug-ins to include and use on your blog, A-K are:
| AutoWebBusiness.com(1Shopping Cart)Opt In Form Creator | Designed to simplify the process of adding a mailing list signup form to your blog, from your auto-responder. Easy to install, highly customizable from a simple user setup menu. Make list building a cinch. http://www.autowebbusiness.com |
| Akismet | Protects your blog from comment and trackback spam. All spam is placed in a spam folder for your preview and either approve or remove. Some people use alternatives but testing to the time of publishing suggests the alternatives produce problems you will not want to contend with – largely because you will not know obviously of the problems the alternatives create. |
| All in One SEO Pack – Pro Version | Optimize every post and page on your website to build search engine friendliness (SEO) for your blog. Includes fields to add a Title Tags, Meta Description and Meta Keywords to each page and post you create. There is a paid upgrade available after installation – and it is highly recommended. |
| Action CommentsGo to site link 1st | Build your e-mail opt-in list using blog comments! Funnel people who comment on your blog to your auto-responder list.http://bit.ly/kUTSy8 |
| Action Pop UpGo to site link 1st | Shows an exit pop-up that cannot be blocked.http://bit.ly/lo3GKG |
| Breadcrumb NavXT | Adds a breadcrumb navigation showing the visitor’s path to their current location. |
| Canonical URL’s | Changes ugly code to readable words in your blog urls. |
| Category Base Killer | Removes the category base from all URL strings |
| Comment Luv | Shows a link to the last post from a person’s comment on your blog so rewards your readers for commenting – encouraging more comments. |
| Dagon Design Sitemap Generator | Generates a fully customizable sitemap |
| DB Cache Reloaded | Cache engine that produces cache of database queries. |
| Digg | Link to Digg site for easy social sharing of blog post. |
| Digg Digg | All-in-One social buttons |
| Do Follow | Removes the no follow attribute and makes site searching and crawling easier. |
| Event Calendar | Manage future events as an online calendar. Display in a dynamic calendar. |
| Exclude Pages from Navigation | Provides a checkbox on the editing page to exclude pages from the primary navigation.. |
| Facebook Social Plug ins | Provides Facebook Social Plug ins as widgets and LIKE button in blog posts. You may also want to add the Facebook Social Plug ins Comments box, which is powerful but will exclude non Facebook users from commenting. |
| Fast Tube | Fast, easy way to insert videos from YouTube into blog posts. |
| Featured Content Gallery | Creates a customizable rotating image gallery. |
| FeedBurner FeedSmith | Detects all ways to access your original RSS Feed and redirects them to your Feed Burner feed so you can track every possible subscriber and more. |
| Google XML Sitemaps | Generates a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog. |
| Hyper Cache | Improves blog performance (speed) and saves resources. |
| Keyword Luv | Reward your commentators by separating their name from their keywords, in the link to their website, giving them improved anchor text. |
Please let me know if you have any comments or questions below.
In Part 4, Plugins L-Z for your blog will be listed.
Do you have any questions about blogging or do you have some ideas you would like to share too?
We would love to help you and also, if you have ideas, we would LOVE to promote you. Please share your questions, comments and ideas via the comments box below.
Need a cheap yet powerful blog in a hurry? The VERY BEST and Cheapest Self-Start Blog Kit we have found, that comes to you ‘ready-to-activate’ is under $350. It is incredibly easy and very powerful to get started with your own new break-through blog today!
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Jennie Armato (affectionately known as The Godmother of the Internet) is Head Coach and Success Mentor at Web Business Academy.
She provides education programs, marketing strategies and systems plus the most powerful tools to manage and accelerate your web success. Jen’s “120 Days to $120K – The Web Entrepreneur Success Program” offers you an extended report plus a one hour complimentary webinar where she reveals the keys to moving forward faster to your best year on the web yet!
Grab your FREE ACCESS to the webinar PLUS learn more about the entire Web Entrepreneur Success Program.
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Tags: blogging
Thanks so much Jennie and team. Great information and I will share it with some I know wanting to do some blogging.
[Reply]
Jennie Armato Reply:
July 4th, 2011 at 6:18 pm
Thanks Wendy, really delighted you got alot out of the series so far.
Cheers, Jen
Jennie Armato recently posted..Decisions Determine Your Destiny
[Reply]
Great information Jen. I have a small wordpress blog on another website so this was very informative. Thank you!
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Jennie Reply:
August 18th, 2011 at 2:35 am
Excellent Liz, so glad it will help you. Jen xo
Jennie recently posted..The Future of Publishing And How To Write A Best Seller
[Reply]
Greetings Jen and Web Business Academy,
Been following your blog and have found the articles to be REAL useful and informative!
Part 3 of your breakthrough blogging series seems to have issues displaying on my screen.
Phil
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