My girlfriend is not alone.  I receive dozens of emails each week from people wanting blogs and websites created for their “idea” and I can tell at least 75% have no clue what to do or where to start.  The classic signs of this state of confusion are the words “thinking” and “maybe” and “possibly” and of course the phrase “not sure”.  Let’s be realistic here and understand that thinking and maybe and possibly are all wishy washy and they do not equal a plan.  To make money on the internet you need a plan. Without it, you’re blog will struggle and you’ll lose interest and you will inevitably waste money.   I want to give you a blogging plan.

A quick check of Google search volumes shows that over 14,800 searches are done for “how to blog” each month.  That is a lot of people looking for a blogging plan of attack. That also means you have over 14,000 people thinking about or potentially starting a blog each month.  Lots and lots of competition.

My initial thought was to send her a quick how-to guide for blogging.  Then I realized that this should be a teaching lesson for more than one future blogger.   So I’m whipping my how-to guide into a blog post for the masses.

Let’s Walk Through the Process for Getting Started With Blogging

Pick a Topic – You’re blog needs to have focus and it needs to be focused on something you know and love.  If you’re going to right about something a lot, you need to love it with all your heart.  I love internet marketing, but I’m a geek.  My girlfriend is a better example of a real life, nongeek blogger.  Mary is going to have a travel focused blog which is perfect because Mary loves to travel.

Check Keyword Search Volumes – Before you finalize your blog’s focus, you need to make sure people will actually search on the topic.  You may love to talk about your bottle cap collection, but it won’t generate any revenue if no one actually searches for terms related to your bottle cap collection.  A quick visit to Google’s Adword Keyword Tool will provide an excellent source for keyword research and finding keywords and phrases people actually search for on the internet.

Register a Domain Name – You need to have a URL (www.something.com) so people can find your blog.  There are lot of extensions available, but I tend to stick with the .com group.  Few .com URLs are available because so many people are holding them hostage.  Be creative, be unique, and if needed use dashes.  I register my domains at GoDaddy.  Search the internet for GoDaddy deals and coupon codes, but remember not to host at GoDaddy.  They’re good for domain registration, but not so great at actual hosting.

Pick a Blogging Platform – If you’ve ever been to my website before, you already know I’m a WordPress girl through and through.  There are other blogging platforms available, but WordPress is by far the best.  You can go 100% free via WordPress.com, but you will be limited on your capabilities.  You can go down the path of WordPress.org and have a world of opportunities available to you.  You will have to self host your blog, but this is easy once you realize there are great hosting companies that do everything for you.

Pick a Hosting Company – Like my allegiance to WordPress.org, I am also a firm advocate of Blue Host.  They offer one click WordPress installs, have great performance, and their technical support team is top notch.  I have literally had to stop the technical team and explain I don’t need education on WordPress, because I’m a website designer.  But the gesture is appreciated and their response time and performance applauded.

Pick a Blog Theme – As with everything else in my life, I am very opinionated here too.  Do not be fooled into thinking free WordPress themes are all you need.  Not only are they generic, they can come with hidden code that links to nasty websites.  Invest in yourself and your blog by picking a solid WordPress theme.  These would be called premium themes.  My favorite (I stress favorite) premium theme provider is StudioPress.  Their Genesis framework is functionally robust and has great performance.  It is all we use at my firm when we create custom themes for websites and blogs.  Should you not find what you want at StudioPress, you can visit ThemeForest.net to find hundreds of WordPress themes from a slew of theme developers.  Be careful though, because not all ThemeForest designers will live up to the technical support provided by the StudioPress team.  Some are very good and others not so much.  Expect to pay at least $30 for a premium theme that is off the shelf and about $1,500 to $5,000 for a custom theme.

Remember Images Matter – A blog needs some eye candy and images are that eye candy.  Images help break up the text and they add depth to the posts.  I like to use BigStockPhoto.com and iStockPhoto.com.

Pick the Right WordPress Plugins – WordPress is awesome, but WordPress plugins extend this awesomeness exponentially.  Not all plugins are good and some are just stinky.  Once I find a good plugin, I tend to use it over and over again for client websites.  My favorite ones include:

• Akismet – The rock star of spam fighters.
• All in One SEO – Easy to use tool for search engine optimization.
• Contextual Related Posts – Provides a list of related blog posts based on content.
• Digg Digg – Easy to use share buttons for content distribution.
• Google XML Sitemaps – Produces a list of content for the search engines and updates them when new content is published.
• Gravity Forms – A premium plugin that makes form create simple.
• NextGEN Gallery – Easy to use image grouping and display.  Don’t forget to add a lightbox.
• Robot.txt – Protects your WordPress core files from search engine indexing.
• Subscribe to Comments – Great for user engagement.
• Taxonomy List Shortcode – Good plugin for creating a A-Z index of your blog topics.  You can see an example of this by clicking on the link in my sidebar.
• WP-DBManager – Back up and database optimization all in one.  Yes you do need to optimize your database.  It’s kind of like brushing your teeth WordPress style.
• SEO Smart Links – Creates automatic hyperlinks to your pages, posts, categories, and tags.
• Outbound Link Manager – Easy way to manage outbound (aka affiliate marketing) links in one page.

Connect With the Search Engines – Submit your XML sitemap (see plugin above) to Google and Bing.  They both have some version of Webmaster Tools available for this process.  Take the time to establish an account and then check back for errors or messages.  Google and Bing have lots of information available, so explore and return often.

Find a Revenue Stream – Your blog should make money.  If you’re good at blogging, you can make lots of money.  You need to sell a product, service, or have ads.  With the help of Google and the affiliate marketing network, getting advertisers is easier than you think.  You can use the Google Adsense program to have their network of advertisers matched up to your content or you can go the affiliate marketing route.  Affiliate marketing refers to placing ads on your blog and you are paid for each impression, click, or action resulting from your ad.  Google has an affiliate network and other popular ones are ClickBank and Share a Sale.  Pick one or more, but have a plan to generate revenue.

Use Email Communication – Stay in touch with your readers and give them a reason to come back to your blog by emailing them regularly.  You can use a free service like Google’s FeedBurner to automatically update subscribers when you publish a new blog post or you could create custom newsletters with email campaign software from Constant Contact or Bronto or Mail Chimp.

Become a Social Media Goddess – Social media does work and it is more than a buzzword.  These days everyone thinks they are great at social media although in all fairness, few really are.  Just remember the goal is to connect with people and engage them.  To succeed you just need to be honest, be open, and be present.  Use YouTube, Facebook Pages, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.  Every time you publish a new blog post, it should be shared via the social media websites.  Just don’t forget to read through some social media best practices and blunders before you start posting.

Analyze Your Traffic – Huh?  This simply means pay attention to how many people come to your blog and watch what they do once they get there.  Google Analytics is a free tool that has a ton of functionality, data points, and graphs.  It will show you how many people visit your blog, where they come from, what keywords they search one, how long they stay, and even what pages or posts make them leave.  Learn from the data and improve your blogging to improve your traffic and activity.

Give Yourself a Break – Blogging success does not happen overnight.  You need to find your blogging mojo, get yourself in a rhythm, and learn what works and what doesn’t work.  Don’t expect to see 1,000 hits a day in the first month.  Be patient and be thorough and you will succeed.

Will Mary Succeed at Blogging?

I’m about 99% confident my friend will do just fine.  Mary is smart, has an MBA, and is quick witted.  She is also determined.  I’ve known her for well over ten years and I know this – if Mary sets her mind to something she will succeed.  And darn it she better.  Mary has a living girlfriend’s guide to blogging in me and I won’t let her fail.

And So I Began Blogging

If you read our Who We Are page, you’ll see a comment about us being earlier adapters of blogging. I personally have been blogging for many years and I was doing it well before it was considered mainstream or cool. At the time, I was the geek who spent her time – aka wasting her time – blogging. I worked for a small software company and I was the VP of marketing. I was the marketing budget. I was paid well and my salary was the sum of our marketing budget. No advertising, no outside web firm, no SEO specialist, nothing. If I wanted something to happen I had to do it myself. So I began blogging. And blogging helped give the company a 400% sales growth in two years. I was crazy in the minds of our decision maker and president. But he let me go and he let me be free. He gave me freedom to allocate my time where I deemed appropriate. He gave me autonomy and that independence brought out the blogger in me and helped drive sales growth.

In my head and heart I know blogging is critical to internet marketing. This is especially true if you are an employee of a technology company. I was back then and the woman I spoke with a week ago is too. I know B2B tech marketing. I did it for ten years and I know what works. Blogging works and I know it. It works for B2C and it works for B2B. It just works. In today’s world, to not blog is to not market. To not blog, it to not SEO.

Blogging is powerful. I’ve written a lot content for our website but they are pages. They are static and they are, well, boring. Blogging is real. When you read one of my blog posts, you are reading me. It doesn’t matter if I’m blogging about ERP software like I did years ago or about WordPress web design like I do now. I blog about past events or about the thoughts in my head about tomorrow. I blog about real life and about what matters to me. And in many cases, this reaches out and connects with someone. It connects because it is personal and because it comes from within.

It’s why I’m sitting on my first morning of vacation, writing and working. I’m passionate about my company and what my company can do to help others. I believe in blogging, just as much as I believe in my company. I believe both can help change the world, because it helps connect with that world via the internet. To not blog, is to not market. To not blog, is to give up.

I don’t want to give up on the woman I spoke with on the phone. I sent her a proposal for SEO and it included blogging. For her company to succeed on the internet, they have to turn their stale, three year old website into a fresh, blogging machine. They need to connect with their target market, their prospects, and their future customers.

My Blog Post is My Loon Call

As I type on my Mac I hear the loon in the background. The loon and his call is one of the reasons why I awake early. I enjoy his call and his connection. I’m not a loon and my voice doesn’t have the same beauty as the loon. But I can blog and at times my blog posts do. I’ve connected with people, with strangers, and I’ve made an impact. I know this is true because I’ve found many clients and customers through blogging and I’ve been doing it for many years. I’ve gone to trade shows and encountered people who read my blog and followed me and my company because of it. And when I left my old employer to launch my own consulting company, those people – my blog readers – came with me as clients of my new company. It’s been two years since I launched Web Savvy Marketing and I still have my ERP peeps show up as new clients. I’m building a website and long-term SEO campaign for one right now. The president knew me and my marketing expertise, because he read my blog posts years ago. That is powerful and more powerful than virtually anything else you can do in marketing.

I started my consulting firm in the midst of a recession. Looking back I now see quitting my corporate job to follow my passion was a major risk. It was somewhat crazy given the fact that I lived in Michigan and our state was going through the worst economic turmoil I could ever remember. In my heart I knew my company would succeed. I knew this even though no one else did. Somehow I knew I could do it and I could find clients outside of Michigan until our local economy shifted. My husband had faith in me and I had faith in the internet. When he asked me how I was going to find clients, I told him I was going to blog and blogging would bring me clients. My husband, the good man that he is, said he had no clue what I meant but that he had faith in me and he knew I could do it. And he was right. I could and I did. The company I created on faith is growing and expanding and surpassing anything I had imagined or had hoped for originally. While my husband will attribute this to my marketing knowledge and desire to help people, I attribute this success to the power of the blog and the ability of my blog posts to connect, to inspire, and to bring forth new business.

If you look at the dates of my blog posts, you’ll see an interesting trend. I blog and publish a number of posts and then nothing. I go quiet. I go quiet because every time I blog regularly, I obtain a bunch of new clients and then I get to busy to blog for a while. Once I get these companies quoted and moving along with my team, I have time to blog again and my cycle begins again. This drives my husband insane and he tends to view it was a broken process. I view this as a success and know this trend illustrates the indisputable power of the blog post.

I actually like blogging.  I enjoy it and it has been a huge help to me professionally.  Last weekend I attended WordCamp Detroit and I was surrounded by bloggers.  I wasn’t prepared for that one, as I use WordPress for website design and I guess I assume everyone in the room would too.  Was I wrong.  There were bloggers everywhere.  Many who had day jobs and blogged at night about their hobbies or in an effort to make a few bucks.  WordCamp Detroit reminded me that blogging is a profession that if done properly and with dedication, can provide a healthy income.

Is there a right way or a wrong way to blog?  Absolutely.  Over the last year I’ve trained a number of clients and presented webinars on blogging best practices. I enjoy blogging and I try to teach others that they too can not only learn to blog, but learn how to create the “perfect” blog entry and love it along the way.  Over this last year I’ve realized not everyone is a blogger and you cannot force them to become one.  That being said, you can teach wannabe bloggers to blog better.

So What is a Blog?

A blog is short for a “web log” and is maintained by either an individual or a group of authors. A blog will typically focus on one topic or niche and is published on a regular basis. There is no limit to the variety of content a blog can contain. A blog can include commentaries, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics, charts or videos. It can be, and often is, a multi-media experience.

Individual bloggers, when they are good, are often times branded as authority figures or celebrities and gain momentum in and of themselves. Personally I’m in love with Matt Cutts, but I would not have even known about him if it were not for his blog.

The public has gotten so conditioned to blogs, that many now expect to find a blog on both business and personal websites.  If you are selling something on your website, most visitors will expect some educational commentary in the form of a blog on the website.  They’ll want to read about why product A is better than product B and they’ll want to do this before they even consider purchasing.  This is best done via a blog, because you can communicate to your reader is a more informal and natural manner.

Why Does the World Love Blogs?

1. People Like Blogs – Blogs provide a sense of intimacy. And it’s this intimacy over the Internet that allows the marketer to capture an audience. And if you can do this, you will capture Google.
2. Search Engines Like Blog – Search engines like blogs, because they create fresh content that is relevant to the website and the reader. I believe this is most demonstrated with the speed in which Google picks up and publishes blog content.  Google can spider and index a blog entry in as little as 30 minutes.
3. Marketers Like Blogs – Blogs help a marketer promote their website, business, product or service. They feed and nurture the core website, help to cultivate branding, convey the marketing message and recruit people to follow their website, business, product or service. Blogs can also be picked up by other bloggers, the media, and blog entries can quickly create a momentum all on their own.

What Are Some Best Practices for Blogs?

1. Focus on One Key Topic or Niche – If you don’t know what to write about, think about what is of interest to you. Look at other blogs and what makes them interesting or think about something that can relate to the product you are selling.
2. Build Your Blog Around the Kitchen Table – If you are using your blog as a marketing tool, think about what the reader would want to hear if you were sitting at the kitchen table with them casually discussing your product or service.  My boat dealership has a gentlemen who is a natural salesperson.  My kids love him and if someone walks through the door of their store, Ron is going to be able to close the deal because he is a people person and he has a natural way about him that makes you like him.  If you can translate Ron’s natural ability with people into a blog post, you’d have people from around the world wanting to buy his boats.
3. Write About What You Know - If you try to blog about something you hate, you will in turn hate blogging. Blog about something you love and your blogging will become a passion and not a chore.  If you are a marketing person and you hate your product, it is going to be difficult for you to blog.  You’re better off asking someone else to write the blog posts and you edit it, as you can only be a good blogger if you have a passion for what you blog about.  It is kind of like cats and people who hate cats.  Cats have a sixth sense for people who don’t like them and I swear my cats will stalk you if this is the case.  They just know.  The reader will “just know” too, so don’t bother talking about something you hate.
4. Make it Interesting to Read – Your blog post should be easy-to-read, fun, and interesting, so make sure it doesn’t read like a dissertation or thesis. If it’s not immediately interesting to read, it doesn’t sell across the Internet.  The easiest way to make a blog interesting is to tell a story of interest and make it personal.  I’ve related Girl Scout cookies to ERP software and ERP software to buying Christmas gifts online because it was relevant and it was my personal experience.  It was real, which made it interesting.
5. Aim for Dialog and a Two-way Communication - Talk to the reader like they are human and allow people to respond to your blog. Today’s Internet is about interaction.  Anyone hear about a little website called Facebook?  Yes I said interaction. That means you need to allow comments and you need to reply to them – the good, the bad, and the really ugly.
6. Include a Great Title – Pick a great title that is unique and reaches out and grabs your audience’s attention and makes them want to read more. I believe so much in this point, I wrote an entire blog post on it.  Visit my post A Good Blog Title is Like Wrapping Paper on a Present to hear my full views on the subject.
7. Have a Great Introduction Ready – You have a few seconds to engage the reader, so your introduction or initital paragraph better be good and it better align with the rest of the blog entry. It needs to set the scene and provide something that entices the reader to stay with you and actually read the full blog post.
8. Don’t Forget About Subheadings – Use H2 and H3 headings to help balance the blog post and give readers sections where they can focus their attention. It will be beneficial to both the reader and the search engines.
9. Don’t Forget About Bullets – Not everybody likes to read paragraphs, so mix it up. I rarely sit and read an entire paragraph. I scan the paragraph and actually pay more attention to bullets than anything else. This is just my personality, because I’m a constant multi-tasker. You have to be prepared for me and the millions like me.  You also should remember that human nature dictates how we read bullets.  Most people read the first one or two then skip to the last one in the list.  This item is number nine so much likely you aren’t even reading it. If you are, then kudos, you’re a better person that I am.
10. Don’t Forget About SEO – Remember that your blog is many times targeted at both the reader and the search engine spiders. When a SEO client tells me he has the perfect idea for a blog post, my first question I ask him is what keyword are you targeting. Eric absolutely gets this, but Jeff and Andy, well, not so much.  So I nag them about keywords and I make sure the blog posts uses our targeted keywords to link to an internal web page to help build deep links within the website or blog.  And yes, we always use use keyword-rich anchor text.  If you don’t know what that means, you need an hour discussion with an good SEO consultant, because it is important.
11. Bring it Back to Your Product or Service – If your website sells a product or service offering, remember not to lose site of your marketing goals. If you’re an affiliate marketer or business who’s sales heavily rely on internet traffic, you need to write content that can be associated with your offering. You can discuss virtually anything, as long as you bring it back to your product or service and the key focus of your blog itself.  It’s okay even if the topic is off the wall, as long as you bring it back to your product or service. My most off the wall blog topics are the ones people remember most. And for me, they were the most fun to write.
12. Stay Focused – Stay on point and your audience will then stay in touch with you. Don’t be my daughter. I call my daughter the clock builder, because she just can’t give you the time. If you ask her the time, she just can’t say it is ten o’clock. She has to go into painfully slow detail about how she built the clock or how she figured out how to tell time. As much as I love her – and I do – she loses my attention because I really don’t care what type of jelly Tommy had on his sandwich at lunch. We were talking about her homework. See I almost lost you there didn’t I?
13. Update Your Blog Regularly – Okay this one is funny, because this is like the pot calling the kettle black. I know and believe this, but I struggle with it bigtime. I spend so much time on my clients’ projects, I forget about my own blog. But I digress. If you post blog entries irregularly, your benefits from blogging with be limited. To gain a base of followers or subscribers, you need to have something tangible for them to follow or read. This means regular and meaningful updates and posts. I prefer at least one blog post a week and you can go up to five posts a week if you have something relevant to say. I have one client in a very competitive keyword environment and we blog three times per week with fresh content. He is going up against the big boys, so we have no choice. But we win on strong content and on keywords.
14. Make Your Post a Multi-Media Experience – Consider it eye candy for your blog. A blog can include a variety of content that can consist of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics, charts, or videos. Didn’t I say this already?  Yes, but it is important so I’m going to say it again.  One word of caution is just don’t include a graphic or video that isn’t relevant.  That is just annoying.  I love blog eye candy as long as it provides a real purpose.
15. Soften the Sales Pitch – Your blog post isn’t a constant sales pitch. If it feels like a sales pitch to the reader, you will lose your audience and you will fail in your blogging effort. You can insert a call-to action, as this will be your pitch opportunity, just don’t be too aggressive.  And for heaven sakes, make the pitch relevant to your post itself.  Talking about chicken soup and offer your reader a new car doesn’t provide any continuity so don’t do it.
16. Watch Your Spelling and Grammar – Make sure you proof your post before publishing. Check for any spelling, punctuation and grammar errors that may appear. A poorly written post can damage your credibility. Once you post, check it out online just to make sure it is correct. I often see an error online that I didn’t see in the backend publisher.  And yes, I’m a horrible speller and have been so since about age six.  While I try to find errors, you still might find on within my blog posts.  I apologize for this now as I know it will happen.
17. Spread the Word About Your Blog – Extended your blog entries with RSS feeds to websites like Facebook, LinkedIn, or other social media sites.  An RSS feed will automatically be updated each time you release a new blog post. You establish your RSS feed connection once and then allow the RSS feed to automatically update your page or profile with each new blog post. That means new inbound links and you do not have to touch anything beside your blog post.
18. Chirp Like a Bird – Tweet your blog post and encourage others to retweet it. Thank those who help spread your message and be appreciative.  And yes, I’d love if you tweeted this post.  There is a little button at the top of this post that makes it super easy for you to do so.  If you want a a cool button like mine and you use WordPress, there are a bunch of plugins that will whip it in for you.
19. Remember to Ping the Post - Utilize a ping service, that allows you to automatically notify blog directories that your blog has been updated. I use WordPress for all my blogging and website design projects, so the ping ability is built right into the software. Get a good ping list established, so whenever you write a new blog post, the blog directories on your “ping list” will automatically be notified of the change. The bigger your ping list, the higher the chances of receiving traffic from those sources. The bigger your ping list, the higher the chances of receiving traffic from those sources.
20. Have an Sitemap.xml File – For some unknown reason, this is the one topic area where clients look at me as if I’m from Mars. Venus maybe, but certainly not Mars. Make sure you have a sitemap.xml file that includes content for your entire website, that is submitted to all the major search engines and updated each time you add or edit a page or post. When you have a robust sitemap.xml file this will literally “reach out a touch” the search engines and nudge them in a way to inform them that you have new content available. This is critical for keeping the search engines up to date on your fresh content and for encouraging them to quickly provide your content in search results. WordPress has a number of great plugins to manage this process, although I can tell you from experience with my client base, not every web software does so be careful.

So now I’m getting ready to close so this is where an excellent wrap up discussion would come in and then I’d sneak in a suttle call to action. But I like blogging and I could talk about SEO and internet marketing all day long, so I’ll skip the pitch.

Okay I’ve changed my mind.  I will tell you one quick story to close. A few years ago I was at a technology trade show in California. I’m a Michigan girl so this is a little but of a journey. At the show a man continued to tell me we had met and he knew me. I had never seen this guy in my life, so I had no idea what he was talking about.  Finally after a few hours, he remembered that he subscribed to my blog on IT Toolbox and he started to tell me his favorite posts. Not only did he recognize my face from my blog, he remembered individual posts and could tell me what I had said.  He actually had personal favorites.  Now tell me any other method of marketing that can touch people and imprint on them in that manner?  At that time I was marketing ERP software, which is generally considered a necessary evil and not something you want to digest and remember.  But Jay did and I thought that experience was very cool and an excellent example of how internet marketing just works.

That my friends, is the power of blogging and one reason I love internet marketing as much as I do.

Below is a list of my favorite plugins.  These plugins are both functional and easy to use.  The augment WordPress’ core functionality and require little or no coding.

1. Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button – Help readers share, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service.
2. All in One SEO Pack – Supports easy definition of page specific meta tags for search engine optimization.
3. AWS Easy Page Link – Easy interlinking between pages when writing content.
4. Breacrumb NavXT – Generates breadcrumb trails for your WordPress blog or website.
5. Contact Form 7 – Simple and fully customizable contact form.
6. Dagon Design Sitemap Generator – Generates a fully customizable sitemap.
7. Datafeedr Random Ads V2 – Aallows you to simply and easily show random ads anywhere in your template files or using widgets.
8. Events – Enables a list of events with a static countdown to date in both pages and sidebar.
9. Featured Content Gallery – Rotating images on home page.
10. Fun with Sidebar Tabs – Adds a tabbed sidebar to existing themes.
11. Google Maps Anywhere – Interactive map to locations utilizing Google maps.
12. KB Robots.txt – Creates a standard robot.txt file for regular WordPress and WordPress MU.
13. Link to Post – Supports easy internal linking to post entries.
14. List Pages Shortcode – Introduces the [list-pages] and http://www.web-savvy-marketing.com/wp-content/themes/websavvy shortcodes for easily displaying a list of pages within a post or page.
15. PhotoSmash – PhotoSmash Galleries makes it easy to create photo galleries in posts or pages that your users can upload images into for sharing with other users.
16. Really Simple CAPTCHA – CAPTCHA field that supports multiple contact forms.
17. Show IDs – Adds a column to the administrative dashboard to show page and post ID’s.
18. Simple Google Sitemap – Generate a sitemaps.org compatible XML sitemap of your WordPress.
19. Simple Image Link – Sidebar images within existing sidebar format
20. Simple:Press Forum – Easy to configure forum that integrates with the standard version of WordPress.
21. Simple Sidebar Navigation – Adds in a customized menu within sidebar widgets. Support multiple instances and integrated easily with tabbed sidebars.
22. Social Homes – Adds a sidebar widget containing a subtle list of all your social homes as linked favicons.
23. Special Text Boxes – Adds simple colored text boxes to highlight some portion of post text. Use it for highlights warnings, alerts, infos and downloads in your blog posts.
24. Subscription Options – Adds subscription option icons for your RSS Feed URL; your FeedBurner Email Service URL and your Twitter Stream URL.
25. TinyMCE Advanced – Enables advanced features and plugins in TinyMCE.
26. TubePress – Displays professional YouTube galleries in your posts, pages, and/or sidebar.
27. Twitter Friends Widget – Widget to display your Twitter Friends in the sidebar.
28. WP-Table Reloaded – allows you to create and easily manage tables in the admin area of WordPress. A comfortable backend allows an easy manipulation of table data. You can then include the tables into your posts, on your pages or in text widgets by using a shortcode or a template tag function. Tables can be imported and exported from/to CSV, XML and HTML.
29. WP Easy Uploader – Easily upload any type of content without the need for FTP.
30. WP-DBManager – Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.

This little birthday celebration led me to wonder if Blogger is as popular as it once was years ago. I also wonder how it fairs against the top competitors in recent years. The geek in me just could not go one wondering or let it go. I had to find out the answers to my burning questions. Well, maybe not burning, but questions nonetheless. I visited Compete to query traffic volumes for Blogger and competitor websites such as WordPress, Typepad, and Livejournal. I was actually surprised at what I discovered.

The chart represents traffic for all four sites and covers the time span of one year. Blogger is still the traffic leader with thirty million unique visitors per month. WordPress – my current darling – comes in close behind. The other sites are falling well behind at less than ten million unique visitors a month. While I don’t know if you can call ten million unique visitors per month “falling behind” in anything, there is certainly a difference in volume between the websites.

Blogger dominates because it is easy to use. I recently sent my mother-in-law to the website to host her personal blog. And it isn’t just easy and it is also free. Users can be completely clueless about website design and still create a blog because everything is drag and drop. My mother-in-law is a perfect example of why Blogger is still going strong after ten years. At age ten it is still cool because it isn’t scary, costly, or difficult for the average Internet user.

The moral of this exercise story is this – you don’t have to be young and fresh to dominate the Internet. You just have to provide value and be marketable to the masses. Blogger and WordPress have both discovered just how to do just that!

A ping list is a list of websites that will be notified automatically each time your website posts a new blog entry. It is simple, effortless, and a critical aspect to obtaining website visitors. You post a new entry or update an existing entry and these websites will automatically be notified of this activity.

Now that I’ve told you about pinging, you may ask how do I know who to “ping”. A complete list of ping URL’s is provided below. If you are using WordPress, all you have to do is input these URL’s into the box labeled “Update Services” in the “Writing” section of your “Settings”. Next you post a blog entry and WordPress will do the rest.

Happy pinging my fellow bloggers!

Ping List

• http://1470.net/api/ping
• http://api.feedster.com/ping
• http://api.moreover.com/ping
• http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
• http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
• http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
• http://bblog.com/ping.php
• http://bitacoras.net/ping
• http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
• http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
• http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
• http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
• http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
• http://coreblog.org/ping/
• http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
• http://ping.amagle.com/
• http://ping.bitacoras.com
• http://ping.blo.gs/
• http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
• http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
• http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
• http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
• http://ping.feedburner.com
• http://ping.myblog.jp
• http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
• http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
• http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
• http://ping.weblogs.se/
• http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
• http://pingqueue.com/rpc/
• http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
• http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
• http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
• http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
• http://rpc.newsgator.com/
• http://rpc.pingomatic.com
• http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
• http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
• http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
• http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
• http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
• http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
• http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
• http://www.bloglines.com/ping
• http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
• http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
• http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
• http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
• http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
• http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
• http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
• http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
• http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
• http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
• http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
• http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
• http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
• http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
• http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
• http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

While many smart and intelligent businesspeople question the purpose of blogs, they do server a tangible purpose and they are important to the overall success of a corporate website. The most common misperception is that blogs are solely written and read by the teen set or worse, by unsocial computer nerds who blog about topics no one ever reads. This thought process is 100% incorrect.

Quality blogs provide information to website visitors. Such blogs help communicate a company’s brand, product, or service offering in a less formal manner that is very similar to a discussion or conversation. They are snippets of content that help educate and communicate to potential prospects or existing customers. They are extremely valuable to overall Internet marketing if written in the correct manner. That being said, they are not a platform to write unending examples of how your product or service or company is the best thing since sliced bread. If you do this, no reader will stay with your blog for more than a few seconds.

In addition to providing website visitors with relevant information, blogs help provide fresh website content for Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. Google likes blogs – plain and simple. Blogs help drive search engine traffic and they are worth every effort put forth into the writing and posting of content. 

I have officially been a blogger for the last few years. I will admit, I was also skeptical of blogs. Not long after starting my humble blog, I was amazed at how quickly my subscribers (people who sign up for automatic updates on your blog entries) went from zero to thousands. I was even more amazed when I went to an industry event and someone I did not know, thought he knew me. He was positive he knew me actually. After a few hours of interaction, my new/old friend realized how he know me – or at least the virtual me. He was a faithful reader of my blog. Then to my complete and utter surprise, he then proceeded to inform me of his favorite blog posts. I was bewildered and baffled. And at that fateful moment, I became a true believer in blogging.

So for various reasons, I have continued to blog and continued to see the benefits of blogging. I have found prospects and true qualified leads through my blog. It has helped my Google ranking and it has helped create a virtual persona for me amongst my peers.