All Entries in the "Wordpress & WP Plugins" Category

7 Twitter Tools For Bloggers

If you aren’t on Twitter yet then you are way behind. Twitter is one of the best tools for bloggers. You can drive so much traffic to your blog from Twitter and many of your followers are targeted traffic and will be repeat visitors. You can actually start relationships with people like you on Twitter and end up doing business with them.

Mashable recently posted about 100 tools for Twitterers and on their list are 6 tools specifically for bloggers. Here is Mashable’s list:

95. Add to Any: Get your posts shared on Twitter by using Add to Any on your WordPress blog.
96. TwitThis: Make use of this plugin to send Twitter messages about your blog post.
97. MyTwitter: Use the MyTwitter plugin to display your Twitter status on WordPress.
98. Twitpress: Twitpress will send out a Tweet every time you post a new blog entry.
99. TwitterCounter: With this plugin, you can display the number of followers you have on Twitter.
100. TwitterFeed: Announce your blog post on Twitter with a customized message using TwitterFeed.

I would add one more Twitter tool to this list. It’s called Twitter Tools, a WordPress plugin that allows you to tweet your blog posts and turn your blog posts into tweets. At the end of each day Twitter Tools will compile a mashup of your tweets and post them as one post on your blog. It’s a cool tool and I highly recommend it.

Twitterdoodle: Add Keyword Content To Your Blog Automatically

I don’t often recommend automatic content creation tools, but TwitterDoodle is one that I’d recommend, but not for every blog.

The idea behind Twitterdoodle is to stream keyword-based Twitter messages into your blog as posts. This adds keyword-based content to your blog, increases traffic, and boosts your search engine rankings. It does this almost like magic once you set it on automatic.

Let’s say you write a blog about dental services. You can set Twitterdoodle to search Twitter for keywords related to your dental blog. You can choose keywords like “dental services” or more specific kewyords such as “veneers” and “braces” and have those Twitter messages run through your blog, putting several messages into one blog post. You’ll begin to see yourself getting more traffic to your blog and higher search engine rankings for those keywords that you target.

Twitterdoodle also allows you to input certain Twitter usernames to opt out of the Twitterstream. So if you get complaints then you can take those Twitterers out of your content stream.

Is this a fair use of content? Some people, to be honest with you, don’t like it. They’ll call you a scraper. But if you aren’t selling advertising on those pages where the Twitterstream appears or you aren’t using other people’s content in other ways that give you profits at their expense then I see nothing wrong with it. The problem with streaming other people’s content is when you use it to their detriment or your unfair gain. Since anyone can gain access to Twitterdoodle and use it in the same manner to rank for important keywords, there is no unfair advantage.

Twitterdoodle is a WordPress plugin. If you are an existing client of Blog Content Provider, we’ll be happy to install Twitterdoodle and set it up for your for $30. Call Chris or Allen.

Time To Upgrade Your WordPress

If you’ve been a customer of Blog Content Provider for some time then there is a chance that you are still on WordPress 2.6.1, but the latest version of WordPress is 2.7.1. In fact, developers are currently working on 2.8.

We don’t recommend upgrading with every new release, but we do recommend upgrading about once a year (at the least). The reason you want to upgrade your WordPress to the latest version from time to time is because older versions frequently pose a security risk. If you are running an older version of any software then you are making yourself vulnerable to hackers and other malicious online creatures. We’d hate to see anything bad happen to you.

If you need to upgrade WordPress, let us know. We’ll be glad to help. If you’d prefer to do it yourself, that’s OK too, but you need to get it done.

5 WordPress Plugins Every Blogger Should Know

It’s difficult if not impossible to run a WordPress blog without at least one plugin. I recommend the following plugins as plugins that can benefit every blogger, but the only one that is absolutely essential is the first one on the list. All others are helpful and I’d strongly urge you to consider them:

• Akismet - Akismet is WordPress’s default spam catcher. It will catch about 90% of your spam. If you set your WordPress settings to require a moderator approval before a comment goes live then that should get all the rest. Don’t run any kind of blog without a spam catcher.
• All In One SEO Pack – Your SEO will be tremendously improved with this plugin. Each post will have its very own title and description.
• AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget – You can also use other social widgets that do the same. I like AddThis. It makes it easy for your readers to bookmark your posts.
• SRG Clean Archives – If your WP archives doesn’t work, this plugin will save the day.
• Feedburner Feedsmith - Run all of your RSS feeds through Feedburner for easier tracking and better stats. Good plugin to have, especially if you want to include links in your feed footer.

There are many more plugins that can be useful for WordPress, but I’d say these are the five most basic plugins for any WordPress user. Akismet is a necessity, the others are a strong recommendation.