Building The Perfect Wordpress Blog

lPulling It All Together
Now that the basics are covered and you can see how powerful and flexible
WordPress can be, lets start pulling some of this info together. I'll start by answering
a few of the most common questions I've been asked privately, or seen asked on
forums.
1. What's the difference between a blog and a regular web site?
Essentially, a blog IS a web site. But the similarities stop there. In it's simplest form,
a blog is a web site that uses a simple content management system that allows you to
easily organize and publish material online. Blogs usually have extra functionality
than regular web sites. Here are a few of the most obvious ones:
- Blog software has the ability to organize and categorize your content by date or
keywords, already built in. You don't have to worry much about internal linking,
archives or categories because with a few minutes of configuration in the admin
panel, it happens automatically for you.
- Blog software outputs an RSS feed. RSS gives your readers a chance to subscribe
to your blog with a special reading software so that whenever you add new content
or a blog post to your site, they're notified automatically. They don't have to come
back to your site to discover your new content.
- Commenting forms – On every post you write, WordPress attaches a comment
form where your readers can leave their comments and you can discuss the content
with them.
- Trackbacks & Pingbacks – When writing a post on your blog, if you link to
another blog within that post, WordPress automatially tries to notify that blog and
add a link back to your post in their comment section. Essentially, WordPress says
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“Hey You, I just wrote something about you! Now come and look at it.”
- Because they're so easy to use, blogs are usually updated more frequently than
regular web sites where it's a pain to manually design, link and update the site.
Blogs are so easy to use that you can concentrate on content only after the initial
setup.
There's more, but that's usually subjective and depends on the blogger's personal
reasons or definitions of what a blog is.
2. How often should I post to my blog?
Another highly subjective question. The obvious (and cheeky) answer would be “as
often or infrequent as you feel like.” But I'll try and do better than that.
You see a lot of people on forums say that the ideal amount of posting for a business
blog is 2-4 times a week. However, if you look at the biggest and most popular blogs
on the internet, like http://www.boingboing.net , http://www.gizmodo.com or http://
slashdot.org , you'll see that they have multiple authors posting anywhere from 10 to
30 times a day or more!
When I was heavily into blogging, my posting frequency wa 3-6 times a day but
every time I bumped that frequency up to 8-10 times a day, my traffic almost
doubled for that day.
My best advice is to post to your blog as often as you can sustain. Meaning – if you
have the time and energy to post 3 times a day on a regular basis, do it. If you can
only post 4 times a week, do it. But, above all, be consistent. If you post regularly
for a while and then suddenly stop for a couple of weeks, you'll most likely lose the
readership you built up the first go around.
3. Where do I get content for my blog?
Your own brain would be a good place to start. If you'd rather not go that route, you
can get ideas for content any number of places.
- Read other blogs in your niche and write about what they are, but add your own
concerns, twists, personality, experiences and opinions to it.
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- Supplement the above with facts, quotes and citations from major media,
Wikipedia, articles, magazines, your local newspaper, etc.
- Find content in any number of article directories.
- Press releases from services like PRWeb.com. It's also a great way to find up to
the minute news to post.
- Get other people to contribute material to your blog. Some people love writing and
will even write for you in exchange for links back to their sites. Some will write for
pay or a percentage of ad revenue, or some will write just to see their name in lights.
- Hire people from services like http://www.elance.com ,
http://www.scriptlance.com or http://www.workaholicsforhire.com Oftentimes you
can have short, nicely keyworded articles written for $5 or less by people at those
services.
- PLR content (Private Label Rights). If you look closely in the right places, you can
find an almost endless amount of fresh content and article packs that people sell the
rights to. Meaning, you can use it, change it and republish it however you want to.