Author Accounts

If you plan to publish content written by several different authors, you should create separate user accounts for each writer. Because every person has a unique writing style, creating separate accounts allows you to give each writer the opportunity to develop his or her own following. If you have a particularly talented author, this can be a good way to attract natural links from other websites and convince more people to visit your site. WordPress allows you to limit the privileges of a user or author so that you are the only one who can make changes to your site template and other pieces of content.

Plugins

Plugins make it easy to manage your site and add extra functionality when needed. Before you publish your first piece of content, install and activate all of the plugins you plan to use. At minimum, you should have plugins for managing spam comments, optimizing your site for better search engine visibility, making it easy for people to share your content via social media, and getting people to sign up for your e-mail newsletter. Installing and activating new plugins before you launch your site gives you the opportunity to test the plugins and make necessary changes without affecting site functionality.

Custom Permalinks

A permalink is the unique URL that points to a specific post or page on your WordPress website. When you first install WordPress, the permalinks usually contain strings of random numbers that make it difficult for people to find your posts and pages. These permalinks do nothing to optimize your site for the search engines or convince people to link to your content. Before launching, change your permalink settings so that they have a custom structure. Many people choose to base their permalinks on the titles of their posts and pages. If you choose this option, a post titled “10 Ways to Make Money Online” would have the URL yoursite.com/10-ways-to-make-money-online. This is much better than the default permalink structure, which would look like this: yoursite.com/?p=123

Social Network Badges or Buttons

If you want to use your WordPress website to attract new visitors and gain loyal subscribers, you must make it easy for people to interact with you on social media sites. If you have accounts with Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media networks, make sure you have buttons or badges for those sites displayed prominently on your pages. Readers should not have to scour your website looking for a way to get in touch with you. Adding social media badges or buttons to your site makes it more likely that people will connect with you, which builds trust.

Categories and Tags

One way to keep readers coming back to your site is to make sure the site is well-organized. If people have to click multiple times to get to one page, they are likely to get frustrated and leave the site. Make sure you use relevant categories and tags for each post, as they make it easier for people to find your content. Relevant tags also make it easier to optimize your site for specific keywords.

Whether you want a simple website to talk about your favorite hobby or a robust website capable of running business applications, WordPress is an excellent content management system. If you have never used it before, getting started can be a little intimidating, so work with a WordPress blogging consultant to make sure you get off on the right foot.

Stick to Your Niche

Many WordPress themes are very versatile, so you can use them for any niche. There are themes out there made for specific niches, however, so it is important to use one that matches your industry. An accountant should use a theme that relates to financial planning, bookkeeping, or other accounting topics. A cookbook writer or executive chef should look for a food-related theme. Using a theme that relates to your industry ties your whole blog together and makes it look more professional.

Keep it Simple

Fancy themes make sense in creative industries such as graphic design and makeup artistry, but they are not as appropriate for dentists, doctors, attorneys, and other business professionals. When choosing a theme, keep it simple. Your readers will be using a variety of different browsers, operating systems, and Internet speeds, and you want your site to work well for all of them. Skip the fancy add-ons that don’t really do anything to improve the user experience, and stick with a simple theme that has everything you need for your site.

Avoid Stipulations

If you plan to use WordPress for a business blog, steer clear of free themes that come with stipulations such as linking to the designer’s site in the footer of every page. These are fine for personal blogs, but every page of your business blog should keep readers engage. If you have links to sites that are not related to your niche, people will question your credibility. Following these terms of use also makes it clear that you were not willing to invest in your business and purchase a theme that does not require you to agree to such stipulations.

Consider Layout

One of the best things about WordPress themes is that you can preview them and see how they will look on a live blog. This makes it possible to determine if the theme’s layout is suitable for your business blog. If the layout looks cluttered, it might be better to choose another theme that will not distract readers from the information you are trying to provide. Some theme developers will even let you see sites that have been designed using a particular theme so that you can get an idea of how your finished site will look.

Keep Design in Mind

Many themes make it very easy to integrate photos, video, and other types of content into your site. Others are a little more difficult to use, so keep this in mind when choosing a theme. You should choose a theme that allows you to add photo and video, change font styles and colors, and move graphic elements around without having to edit the WordPress code. Doing so makes it easy to update your blog on a regular basis, which is something search engines love.

When you first start a business blog, all of the options available can be a little overwhelming. An experienced WordPress blogging consultant can help you determine your needs and then find a theme that matches them. No matter your budget or your industry, there is a WordPress theme that is right for your business website.

Multiple Accounts

One of the many benefits of a corporate blog is that it lets customers get to know people at your company, giving you an opportunity to build trust and encourage loyalty. When several people post website content under the same name, it makes people question your sincerity. WordPress allows you to create multiple user accounts so that people with different voices and writing styles can build their own audiences and keep people coming to your site to read more.

Customer Interaction

WordPress has a robust commenting system that makes it easy to interact with your customers. If you are new to corporate blogging, WordPress makes it easy for people to ask questions about your products and services, report problems with their orders, and post feedback about their experiences with your company. No additional coding is required for this functionality, so you will be ready to interact with customers as soon as WordPress is installed and customized to your liking.

Social Media Integration

More and more customers are now turning to social media to learn more about products and services they are interested in buying. Your company should have several social media accounts to make it easier to interact with people on Twitter, Facebook, and other networks. One of the biggest advantages of using WordPress for a corporate blog is that you can easily integrate your social media campaign with your blogging campaign. WordPress has dozens of plugins to make social bookmarking and sharing easier. Making it easier for people to share your content makes it more likely that they will do so, so featuring your social media profiles on your corporate blog is an ideal way to get people talking about your company.

Scalability

A small business owner usually does not need much in the way of website functionality, but a corporation does. Another major benefit of using WordPress for your corporate blog is its scalability. WordPress has the ability to grow with your blog and its readership, which can help keep your corporate blog running smoothly even if you experience big increases in traffic or decide to add new features to your site. The thousands of plugins available also makes it easy to customize your corporate blog and set it apart from the blogs of other companies in your industry.

Whether you are new to blogging or you have been a corporate blogger for years, WordPress clearly has many benefits. If you are not sure how to use WordPress to its fullest advantage, a corporate blogging consultant can help you with everything from customizing a theme to keeping your site secure.

Website Links

Building natural links to your website is one of the most important aspects of optimizing your pages for the search engines. Every time you submit a release to an online distribution service, the release should have at least one link to your company’s website. Because Google is always changing its ranking algorithm, be sure to vary the anchor text for each link. If you have 20 links with the same anchor text, your site may be penalized.

Keywords

When publishing press releases on your own website, they should contain keywords related to your products and services. When people use search engines, they type in specific words and phrases. These words and phrases, known as keywords, help people find the information they need. Your SEO press releases should contain relevant keywords to attract search engine spiders and website visitors. When selecting keywords, pay close attention to phrases that are at least three words long, as they usually have less competition.

Optimized Title

Optimizing your press release title gives you the opportunity to attract attention and use your target keyword. If the distribution site limits the number of characters displayed in the title, optimize the title for your keyword instead of focusing on an attention-getting headline. Distribution sites often use the title of your press release as the page title or in the page description, so you want to be sure you use your keyword. If the distribution site allows you to create a subtitle, use this additional space to create a compelling lead.

Relevant Quotes

Every SEO press release should include at least one quote, preferably two. Using a quote in the introduction of the press release may convince people to keep reading. Sprinkling quotes throughout the body of the release is a great way to add promotional language or more information about your products and services. Using quotes works especially well if you have a paid subscription to PR Web, as the site uses pull quotes to highlight the quoted information found in press releases.

Summary and About

If you plan to use a press release distribution service, your press release should have a summary. The summary should be one or two sentences that contain at least one of your keywords. Your release should also include a short blurb about your company. Write this blurb in the third person and be sure to include a link to your company’s website. Use keywords whenever possible to attract search engine spiders and help improve your site’s search engine ranking.

Contact Information

Although you might want to use press releases to enhance your SEO strategy, the primary goal of a press release is to get a journalist or blogger interested enough to contact you for more information. Because potential customers will also see your release, it should contain several types of contact information. Include your telephone number, website URL, and e-mail address. If you have a physical location, include your mailing address. Including this type of information will make it easier for people to contact you and learn more about your company.

Optimized press releases should be a part of every marketer’s toolkit, but optimizing a release can be tricky if you have never done it before. An experienced corporate blogging consultant can help you learn the ins and outs of optimized press releases so you can attract more positive attention to your business.

Quality Equipment

You do not need to rent a production studio or pay a videographer thousands of dollars to create a high-quality marketing video, but you do need to have the right equipment. Lighting is one of the most important considerations, as the right lighting can enhance the presenter’s appearance and make your products look more appealing. You should also use a tripod to prevent camera shake, which gives marketing videos an amateur feel and drives viewers away from your videos. If you don’t have the money to purchase this equipment, rent it to create your first video.

Set and Prop Considerations

A solo entrepreneur may be able to get away with a video shot in her backyard, but a large company should shoot marketing videos in locations relevant to the products and services being discussed. A company that manufactures swings and slides should consider using a playground to film a marketing video for these products. If you have a home-based business, set aside some space to use as your makeshift studio. Put a nice piece of furniture in a well-lit corner, add a colorful painting or potted plant, and use this area to film all of your future marketing videos. You do not have to spend a lot of money to create a set, but you should focus on making your filming area as professional as possible. If you are on a tight budget, try to set up this area in a room that gets a lot of natural light so you do not have to spend a lot of money on lighting equipment.

Targeted Script

You will also need a well-written script aimed at your target audience. You might target customers who are in a certain age group or those who have a certain amount of disposable income. Make sure the script is suited to the subject matter and the audience; you do not want a humorous script for a video that markets funeral planning services, nor do you want a serious script for a video selling gag gifts. Before shooting your video, rehearse the script several times.

Branding Considerations

Every marketing piece you produce should have a consistent brand message. Make sure every video includes your company logo and tagline. Consider ending the video with a short proposition statement about your products or services. This statement helps viewers understand how your products and services differ from those of your competitors. Include your contact information at the end of each video to make it easier for people to order from you or ask questions about your company.

Creating Low-Cost Videos

Because shooting videos costs more money than writing articles, video marketing can be cost-prohibitive for small companies. One way to take advantage of the popularity of this trend is by turning your written content into videos. Convert your existing content into several PowerPoint presentations by picking out the most important points and using them to make slides. Then turn these slides into videos with Camtasia or similar software. If you have the resources, have someone narrate the videos so that people who are visually impaired can listen to the content.

Video marketing is not another fly-by-night trend; it’s here to stay. That means you must understand how to integrate video into your overall marketing strategy. If you do not know how to add video to a blog post or optimize your video content for the search engines, a business blogging consultant can help you learn how to use video marketing to your advantage.

Interactivity

Most marketing is very one-sided; you put an advertisement in the newspaper or record a television commercial without knowing if your efforts are changing the way people think about your products and services. When you use WordPress to start a company blog, you make it possible for customers to interact with company representatives on a regular basis. Instead of spending money on a marketing tactic and hoping it works, you can use the information gleaned from interacting with customers to develop marketing strategies that produce great results. You can also solicit feedback about your products and services or conduct market research to determine which new products and services would be the most profitable.

Easy Optimization

Search engine optimization is a strategy that every company should be using to generate targeted website traffic. SEO is not about tricking the search engines or stuffing content with keywords. Instead, your SEO techniques should make it easier for the search engines to find and index your pages. A good SEO strategy will also make it easier for people in your target market to find your website. WordPress makes it easy to optimize every page of your website for specific keywords, as it has built-in SEO fields on every page. WordPress also makes it easy to add meta data, optimized page titles, and other SEO elements to your pages and blog posts.

Personalization Options

Using a blogging platform like WordPress to create and manage your website makes it easy to personalize your site and gear your content toward specific audiences. If your company sells products to senior citizens, for example, you can easily change the default font of your website to something large enough for most seniors to read. WordPress also allows you to integrate photo and video into every page and post, making it easier to attract people who would rather watch a video or listen to an audio clip than read the text on a website.

Team Site Management

WordPress makes it easy to allow several members of your marketing team to post new content and respond to customer inquiries. This is much harder to do with traditional websites, as you may have to pay a website designer to update your content every time you have something new to say. If the designer does not have time to update your website right away, you may even lose out on time-sensitive marketing opportunities. WordPress allows you to create separate user logins for everyone on your marketing team. If your website manager is out of the office, one of your other team members can easily post new content. This is especially helpful when you want to post press releases or address serious issues. WordPress also allows you to designate team members use authors or administrators. Administrators can make high-level changes to the website, while authors are limited to posting new content and performing basic functions.

If you need to market a product or service, WordPress can reduce your marketing costs and make it easier to reach people in your target market. If you need help choosing a template, setting up new user accounts, or customizing your blog, a WordPress blogging consultant can help you create a website that gives you a solid return on your investment.

Planning Marketing Messages

Before you publish anything, you should have a plan for how your blog posts and social media messages will help define your brand. You must know what your values are, what personality you want to portray to potential customers, and what promises you want to make the people who will be buying your products and services. The answers will depend on your personality and the types of products and services you sell. Map out your entire strategy so that you know how many messages you need and have an idea of what type of content you will be publishing.

Targeting Your Messages

If your messages are going to be effective, then they must be targeted to a specific audience. Defining a target audience will make it easier to develop messages that will attract people in a certain demographic. Marketing professionals often market to people in certain age groups, but there are other ways to define your target audience. If you sell products to homeowners, then you will want to target your messages to people who own their homes rather than rent properties from other people. If you sell car accessories, you don’t want to target your messages to people who use public transportation or walk to work. You can also target your messages to specific people based on their family status or purchasing power.

Creating Positioning Statements

A positioning statement is a statement that communicates the benefits of using your product and services or explains what you do that is different from what your competitors do. When writing a positioning statement, you must identify the key benefits of using your product or service, your competitive strengths, and the positions of your major competitors. Your statement should include the name of the product or service, the product category, a description of the target customer, and a key benefit of using your product or service. One of the most common mistakes in writing a position statement is listing multiple benefits of using the product or service. Every position statement should focus on one benefit. Another common mistake is focusing on benefits that are not unique to a particular product or service. Once you get the hang of writing positioning statements, you must write several of them to use for different audiences and in different publications.

Develop Short Pitches

Social media and corporate blogging are not the only tools you should be using to market your products and services. If you decide to market your business by attending networking events, you should have an elevator pitch prepared ahead of time. An elevator pitch is a short statement that describes your products and services in a way that appeals to a specific target market. “I’m a business coach” doesn’t generate much interest, but “I help nutritionists increase their profits by as much as 75 percent within six months” is sure to grab the attention of the listener. Develop the statement at least a few days before the event so you have time to practice delivering it smoothly.

Corporate blogging and social media are two of the most powerful tools available, but you must understand how to keep your messages consistent. If you need help setting up a corporate blog or developing a content strategy, a corporate blogging consultant can help you determine the best way to get your message to the people who need your products and services.

Guest Blogging

If you are really in a time crunch, finding a guest blogger might be the best way to solve the problem of needing new content and not having enough time to write it. Some industry experts are happy to write a guest post for a blog that receives a lot of traffic, so you may be able to source high-quality content without having to pay a professional blogger. Guest bloggers typically require that you link to their websites or post a short profile about their work, so choose a guest blogger carefully. You do not want to send traffic to a direct competitor’s website, so find someone who is involved in your industry but does not sell the same products and services you do. If you prefer to have the guest blogger write about a specific topic, discuss the topic in advance. If you are comfortable allowing the blogger to choose a topic, provide details about your audience and website goals. These details will help the blogger write a post appropriate for your audience.

Building on Old Content

Your blog is one of the best places to find inspiration for new content, especially if you work in an industry that experiences frequent changes. If you write for a tech blog, the technology you wrote about two years ago is probably outdated today. Read through your old posts and then draft a post about what has changed since you last wrote about the topic. You might compare and contrast the old technology to the new technology or write about updates that vendors have made to their products. Make sure you link to your original post in the new post so readers can read both stories. This is a great way to engage readers and get them to read your older posts.

Summarizing past content is another great way to generate new content for your blog. If you wrote five posts about tech trends, summarize them in a post called “Top Tech Trends of the Year.” If you wrote 10 book reviews for your marketing blog, recap those reviews in one post titled “Must-Read Books for Marketing Executives.” Because you already wrote about each topic, you will not have to conduct as much research to write your new post. This tactic will save you time on days when you don’t have a lot of time to write a new post.

Interviews with Industry Experts

If you are under a tight deadline, an e-mail interview with an industry expert is a great way to generate content without having to write an entire post. E-mail the questions a few days ahead of time so the expert has enough time to respond. When you write your post, copy and paste your questions and the expert’s answers. Write a short introduction and a conclusion to tie everything together, and you’ll have a brand-new piece of content in a short amount of time.

Publishing high-quality content is one of the most important things you can do to attract new readers and get current readers to recommend your blog to others. If you are not sure how to use your blog to make more money or build your authority in a specific niche, a WordPress blogging consultant can help you create a strategic blogging plan that will help you reach your business goals.

Technical Skills

If you know how to code in CSS or use PHP, you will have an easier time selecting a blogging platform than someone who has no coding experience. As you evaluate different platforms, keep your technical skills in mind. If the information about a platform seems confusing, using that platform may be beyond your technical skills. If you still want to use that platform because it has all of the features you need, consider hiring a small business blogging consultant to install and maintain the blog for you. A consultant can also train you to publish your own content so that you can maintain some control over your blog.

Free Blog Hosting Services

A hosted site is a blog that is hosted on another domain. Blogger is a popular example of a hosted blogging platform. All you need to sign up for this type of blog is an e-mail address. In just a few easy steps, you can select your blog address, pick a template, and start blogging. The biggest advantage of using a hosted blog is that you don’t need any technical knowledge to do so. Hosted blogs do have some drawbacks, however. One major disadvantage of starting a hosted blog is that you will have access to limited features. You may not be able to customize your blog as much as you would like, so it will look similar to dozens of other blogs. The generic URL assigned to your blog will also make it difficult for you to make your blog part of your brand. Companies that host blogs may also restrict the type of content you have on your blog or what you can do with your blog once it is set up.

Self-Hosted Blog Platforms

If you are starting a blog for your business, a self platform is really the best way to go. WordPress is one of the most popular self-hosted platforms, but there are several others that have advanced functionality. The biggest advantage of using this type of platform is that you can install the software on your own website, so you can choose a URL that includes your business name, your product name, or a keyword related to your industry. Another advantage of using this type of blogging platform is that you have more control over the type of content you publish. Having control over your content will help you publish information that is relevant to your readers. The only real drawback to using this type of platform is that you have to pay to register your domain and host your blog. However, domain registration costs just a few dollars per year, and there are also many inexpensive hosting packages available.

If you are ready to set up a blog for your business, talk to a small business blogging consultant before you do so. A consultant can help you choose a domain name, select a blogging platform, and customize your blog. Having a consultant handle the technical side of blogging will leave you free to publish high-quality content and connect with your readers.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing

In the early days of SEO, all you had to do to improve your ranking was to make sure your blog posts repeated your keyword as many times as possible. Unfortunately, this practice made text sound like spam. Keyword-stuffed text was hard for people to read and did little to improve each user’s experience. The search engines started cracking down on this old SEO practice, so now it is best to avoid keyword stuffing. Instead of trying to hit a certain keyword density when you write your posts, include your keyword naturally in the text. Use similar phrases in place of your keyword wherever they make sense. This will make it easier for people to read your text, keeping them on your site for longer periods of time.

Ensure User-Friendly Navigation

One of the cardinal rules of good website design is that users should be able to get to any page of your site with no more than two mouse clicks. If you want people to keep visiting your blog, you should keep this rule in mind and make it easy to navigate. Create a menu that allows people to quickly access your contact information and privacy policy. Create categories and tags that make it easy for people to find content that is relevant to their interests. Simple navigation will make it more likely that people will bookmark your site and return when they need information related to your industry.

Avoid Unnatural Backlinks

Another early SEO strategy involved paying people for backlinks or trading links with other website owners. Google and other search engines now look at your link profile when determining your ranking, so it is important to have a profile that includes natural links. The best way to attract natural links is to publish content that people find useful and information. They will be more inclined to share your content and link to your website when you publish this type of content. This will prevent you from having to trade links with other people or use any other SEO tactics that could get your website penalized in the search engine rankings.

Improve Your Bounce Rate

The term “bounce rate” refers to visitors who come to your site and then leaves without viewing other pages. The search engines see a high bounce rate as an indicator that you may not be providing content that people want to read. A high bounce rate could negatively impact your search engine rankings, so it is important to control this metric. Reduce your bounce rate by publishing high-quality content that answers reader questions or gives them information they need. Add internal links to other pages on your site to entice readers to read other pages.

All of the above techniques are easy to use if you have SEO experience. If you are new to blogging or search engine optimization, however, you can benefit from the knowledge and experience of a search engine optimization consultant. Consider hiring an SEO consultant to guide you in optimizing your site for the search engines and publishing content that your visitors will love to read.