Blog production toolkit: quick summary of tools
In the Blog Production Toolkit Series, we’ve gone into some detail on the why’s and wherefore’s of using various tools to enhance our blogging productivity. In the final post of the series, I’ll simply round up all the tools we’ve mentioned so you have them in a single handy list. Of coure, these are just the tools that make MY blogging more productive and efficient – if you have other favorites, be sure to mention them in the comments!
Blog Architecture and Mechanics
WordPress software – self-hosted version (www.wordpress.org)
Domain Registration and website hosting services (www.bluegravity.com)
FTP software for transferring files to your webhost (WS-FTP by Ipswitch)
Essential WordPress Plugins
Akismet – fights comment spam
FeedSmith – RSS feed management
SubscribeRemind – Builds your subscriber list
All-In-One SEO Pack – optimizes content for search engines
Sociable – Reminds readers to share
WordPress Automatic Upgrade – Upgrades your software quickly
WP-DB-Backup – manages database backups
Writing Tools
MS Works – free Windows word processor
Windows Notepad – free Windows text editor
WordPress Visual Editor – built into WordPress
Photo/Image editing Tools
Picnik.com – free web-based photo and image editing
Corel Paint Shop Pro – cheaper, leaner version of Adobe Photoshop
Blog production toolkit: writing and image editing tools
So far in the Blog Production Toolkit series we’ve looked at the basic technical tools you need to run self-hosted WordPress, and we’ve studied my list of must-have WordPress plugins for increased blog functionality.
Now let’s turn to the creative side of things. These tools help you manage your writing and images more efficiently so updating the blog doesn’t become a chore.
Posts and Pages – the Writing
WordPress Visual Editor – of course, the WordPress software is centered around a console where you can write and edit your individual posts and pages, upload photos or graphics from your computer, and click to publish. For quick posts, this is the one and only stop you need.
I don’t do a lot of “quick posts,” though, so I have a three-step process that I call “write-strip-post.”
Write – I use the built-in free word-processing software that comes with Windows, called MS Works, to compose my posts. That’s primarily because for me, the writing is still the most important part of the process and I want to be able to focus on it and give each post the attention it deserves. Personally, I can’t do that with all of WordPress’s bells and whistles surrounding my composition area.
Strip – I then copy and paste my finished post into Windows’s free text editor, Notepad, to strip out any formatting that MS Works may have added.
Post – I then copy and paste the clean text from Notepad into the composition window in WordPress. I add any necessary formatting and effects such as bullet points or italics, add an image (or 2 or 6, depending), check my tags and assign a category, preview, and click the Publish button all in WordPress. This step usually takes me about two minutes, unless the preview reveals some necessary editing.
Photos and Graphics – the Imagery
No question that photos and graphics enhance all but the shortest posts – they can provide a visual representation of the concepts you’re writing about, they can help draw the reader in to actually read the post, and they can serve simply as a way to break up a sea of words in a longer post.
Most likely, you’ll need to crop and possibly re-size your images before uploading them into WordPress. I use two tools for this:
Picnik.com – a free web-based photo editing system that performs simple functions quickly and easily without installing software.
Corel Paint Shop Pro – Yes, Adobe Photoshop’s the industry standard. But I’ve been using PSP since I first started building sites in 1996 – it’s cheaper, and later versions rival the more expensive products in terms of features. In fact, I still run an older version of this program because it’s lean and simple.
Once a photo is cropped and sized appropriately and saved to your computer, you can upload it directly into your post using WordPress’s image-loading feature. Personally, I use my FTP software to upload the image into my image directory, then use WordPress’s “add image from URL” feature.
Should your small business blog?
From SmallBizTrends.com - creating and maintaining a quality blog on your small business’s website can increase your site traffic by 55 percent, improve your search engine rankings, and increase your number of incoming links.
I would add that by using Twitter and a Facebook Fan Page to provide resources to your friends and followers, and to promote your blog, you’re harnessing the power of social media to help achieve business goals.
Blog production toolkit: essential WordPress plugins
One of the neat things about WordPress is that there’s a whole slew of programmers out there writing “improvements” for it in the form of plug-ins. A plugin is a bit of stand-alone code that adds a new or enhanced function to your WordPress blog. Plugins might be used to control spam comments, remind visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed, or even pull in headlines from the feed of another website. Over the past couple of years I’ve added and removed plenty of WordPress plugins, and have found the following to be the most useful and trouble-free:
Akismet – this is spam-comment fighting plugin and it comes with the WordPress software.
FeedSmith – runs the RSS feed from the blog through Google’s FeedBurner service, which allows you to track your number of feed subscribers and otherwise maximize the power of your feed.
SubscribeRemind – Reminds readers to subscribe to your blog’s RSS Feed.
All-In-One SEO Pack – allows you to optimize your blog’s posts and pages for exposure in the search engines.
Sociable – Reminds readers to share your content with favorite ‘social’ sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, and Technorati.
WordPress Automatic Upgrade – Whenever a new version of WordPress comes out, WPAU helps you update in a flash. (I recently upgraded four blogs to the latest version of WordPress in under 10 minutes, with no glitches.)
WP-DB-Backup – Lets you schedule backups of your WordPress Database at regular intervals.
Each of these plugins is free – you simply download the code, then upload it into your wp-contents/plugin folder, and activate it in the WP dashboard.
Blog production toolkit: self-hosting with WordPress
It’s no secret that I love the WordPress blogging platform. I use it on all four of my personal blogs, and I use it as the sole platform for my business website. One of the things I like about WordPress is that there is a large and vibrant community of developers who support it – not only the folks who work on WP itself, but thousands of others who write plugins and create design themes. There are entire excellent blogs devoted to WordPress and its features. There is no shortage of help if a problem arises.
I’ve said before that there are times when a free-hosted blog is just what you need. For my present situation, however, I use what’s called “self-hosted WordPress.” What’s the difference?
A free-hosted blog is one where your blog sits on a server owned and operated by the company that makes the software. The URL of the blog will look something like this: http://nameofyourblog.wordpress.com. WordPress doesn’t charge you anything to use their software, or to store and back up your site. The range of site design templates is somewhat limited for free-hosted WP blogs.
A self-hosted blog is where you go out and find a web hosting company, install the blogging software on their server (and likely pay them a fee to do so), and manage the site yourself. There are many more design templates available for free-hosted WP blogs – in fact, you can write your own or edit an existing one if you’re so inclined.
Of course, self-hosting my own blogs means I’m responsible for updating the software when notifications come out, for backing up my sites on a regular basis, and for paying my web host each month to keep the lights turned on. (Fortunately there are tools that automate almost all of these tasks, but that’s another post!)
In case you’re considering a switch to self-hosted WordPress, I thought it might be useful to share my personal blog production toolbox. Here are the basics for self-hosting:
- WordPress software, self-hosted version
- Domain registration and Website hosting services through Blue Gravity.com
- WS-FTP software from Ipswitch, for transferring files from my computer to the webhost
In future posts I’ll share other tools that enhance my blogging productivity. Those mentioned above are the bare minimum needed to self-host WordPress.
How to find relevant blog posts to link out to
I’ve talked a little before about the importance of linking out to other blogs as often as possible. But, how on earth does one find relevant posts to link to? Since my goal is to become a resource for my readers, I always want to steer them to quality blogs that might improve their blogging or some other aspect of their lives. It’s important to me, therefore, to find quality links worthy of receiving my link.
The first way to find relevant links is to search the blogs you currently subscribe to in your niche. Visit the blog’s main page and look for a search this site feature. Type in a few key words or a whole phrase, click Search, and see what you find. This can be a good way to find a quick worthy link, or it can also be a good fall-back strategy for when you can’t find anything else.
To find other quality blogs to which you can link out, just try the Google Blog Search feature. By visiting Google.com, and under the “More” link clicking “Blogs” before you do your search, you’ll end up searching Google’s exhaustive blog directory for any phrase you wish. I use this strategy all the time.
For example, if I want to write a post about updating the “About page” on your blog, I can head over to the Google Blog Search and search for a phrase like improve about page. (Notice I leave words like “the” or “your” out of my search, as including them could limit my results.) I click to search, then can review the results of recent blog posts on this topic. A quick perusal of not only the relevant post but also of the rest of the website tells me if it’s a blog worth linking to (and not just a link-bait or “scraper” blog), and voila - I’ve got a blogger to link out to, a new resource to share with readers, and probably a new blog to add to my own RSS Feed Reader.
Finally, it’s important to note that you don’t always have to link out to other blogs in your own niche. If you come upon a post from a blog in a completely different niche that you think would be valuable to your readers, by all means link to it!
And, if you don’t find a link immediately that you want to use, go ahead and publish without it. If you do find a great link in the future, you can always update the post later to include the new-found link.
Tell a story: how to add depth to your blog posts
When I was blogging about small business marketing, one of my favorite ways to add depth and value to my instructional posts was to tell a story and then relate it back to marketing principles in some way. Although that blog no longer exists, here’s an example from one of the posts:
I was making the point that a business owner shouldn’t hurry through the steps of planning a marketing effort, and related this concept to my efforts at home to grow marigolds from bedding plants vs. sowing directly from seeds. I told the story this way:
I struggled for a long time to get marigolds to grow in my garden. They should have been easy: they are not a picky plant, and they bloom all season long. But for sixteen years, I spent untold dollars on lovely little bedding plants that simply refused to grow.
Then one year, I received a solicitation from my Alumni Association which included a packet of marigold seeds. Long about the end of May, I threw these seeds rather haphazardly into a sunny spot - mostly as an after thought, because I didn’t want them to go to waste.
What happened was that the seeds took root and flourished where no marigolds had done so before.
The anecdote is only part of the overall post, of course. The trick is to tie the story back into the general topic of the blog, which was small business marketing. I wrapped it up this way:
What’s this got to do with marketing? Simple: it’s the difference between throwing money and time at something in anticipation of instant results, versus taking time to work through the natural cycle of things and find value in the process as much as the result.
(It) seems likely that if you make the choice to do things well, completely, and right, you’ll flourish in a way you never have before.
Here’s why this is valuable:
Anecdotes help personalize the blog, making the reader feel that they are connecting with a person rather than a faceless “teacher entity.”
Anecdotes help you make your point without being preachy. Use a story to illustrate your point, and the post becomes more about a lesson you learned and are sharing, rather than a lesson you are trying to teach.
Fiction writers are admonished to “show, don’t tell.” By sharing an anecdote that makes your point, you’re showing readers why something is true rather than just asking them to take your word for it.
Story-telling fosters the kind of lively back-and-forth exchange that makes for great conversation.
A relevant story not only illustrates your point but also illustrates the universality of the problem being addressed.
Each of these benefits is bound makes readers a little more likely to interact with you, to share their own experiences via your comment section, and to contribute to the greater conversation around your central theme.
photo from the Flickr stream of Adwriter.
Never run out of ideas for blog posts
Sometimes I really struggle for ideas to write about. Other times, the ideas flow faster than I can log them. One of the biggest challenges I still face as a blogger is making sure my posting frequency doesn’t fluctuate along with the natural flow of ideas.
Here are some strategies I’ve used:
I regularly brainstorm ideas for posts and keep the ideas in a notebook. When it’s time to write, I can select an idea from the list. Hopefully I’ve also jotted down some of the key points to make in the post.
Another idea-generator is called “mind-mapping.” For me, this works best when I start with a post I’ve already written. I draw a circle in the middle of a sheet of paper and write the name of the existing post in the circle. From there I just start brainstorming ideas for follow-up posts, posts on a similar topic but from a different angle, “antonymnic” posts where I write about the opposite of the idea, and other twists on the existing topic. This usually generates at least 5-10 new ideas.
If I’m ”in the zone,” I’ll write several posts in one sitting and use my WordPress software to schedule them to post automatically on assigned days and times in the future. I’ve gotten as far as three weeks ahead using this method, which gives me time to work through any dry spells.
I’ll sometimes experiment with assigning certain types of posts to various days of the week, for example: opinion posts on Mondays, list posts on Wednesdays, problem-solving posts on Fridays. This at least gives me a guideline for what type of post my readers are expecting, and that makes it even easier to select something from my notebook of ideas.
I will also sometimes just select a type of post, and try to brainstorm a title based on that type. Some common types I’ve used include list posts (“Ten Ways…” “Five Things…” etc.), Q-and-A posts, link posts (link round-ups), and opinion posts (on a controversial topic).
Failing all of this, of course, you could just try snagging one of Chris Brogan’s 100 post ideas.
photo by Microsoft Clips Online
The value of linking out to other blogs
Q. I read frequently that I should “link out” to the posts of other bloggers writing about similar topics. Why should I do that, when I want to keep readers on my blog?
A. This question speaks to the very heart of what makes blogging collaborative rather than competitive. It was the biggest hurdle I had to overcome when I began niche blogging.
My first niche blog was about small business marketing. I was eager to share my knowledge of the topic, but I was also very protective. Why should I put my wisdom out there free of charge, I wondered, and why on earth would I send my readers off to read someone else’s blog?
It took me a long time to digest the notion that my blog was a bit about me, but not just about me. I finally understood that there was tremendous value in becoming not just an authority for my readers, but also a resource – their link to more voices speaking on the same topic - because becoming a resource helped make me an authority.
Linking out is also a good traffic-building strategy. When you link out to another blogger writing about your topic, you begin to build a relationship with them. They will not only come to your blog to check out who is linking to them, they will also most likely link back to you on a future post. This will bring new traffic to your blog, and links coming in also tell the search engines that others find your blog worth linking to. This means better search engine results.
One of my all-time favorite bloggers – no, make that all-time favorite people – is Mike Sansone of Converstations. Mike believes that blogs are “conversation stations,” and that it’s essential to include one link out in almost every post. I believe him.
Are your blog post comments scattered?
As bloggers, we try to make use of all the cross-promotional tools we can to try to drive traffic to our blog posts. Particularly with venues like Facebook and Twitter, where people can also comment on what you’ve written, it’s easy for comments about a post to end up scattered across several different places.
So the question becomes: Is it important to try to gather all the comments into one place for the most complete discussion?
When I first noticed this occurring with some of my posts I had shared on Facebook, I worried that the comments there would not become part of the “record” of the original post.
But I soon realized that it’s beneficial to have a trail back to the original post from several different venues because it gives you more “lines in the water” for reeling in new readers.
That said, I do think you can further manage your scattered comments for the benefit of your blog. Here’s a strategy that will help bring the conversation back to the blog, but still acknowledge and promote the responses on other venues. It will also help you get more “mileage” out of the original post, while contributing something new.
Take a quick look back at the responses you got on Twitter, or Facebook, or wherever, and write a follow-up post about them.
- If any of them asked a particularly good question, answer it in a new post inter-linked back to the original.
- If they were all just “nice post”-type comments, think of something you personally can add to the post and lead into it by saying, “My post on (x) received some very positive feedback over on Twitter, so I wanted to follow up with (xx).”
- Be sure to include your user ID on the other relevant service(s) within your post so blog readers can find/follow you there.
Use this strategy to showcase all the conversations taking place around your blog post.
photo from the Flickr stream of Jungle_boy
