WordPress Plugins and Widgets To Help You Manage Your Content Efficiently

Managing large volumes of content can be quite a task if not managed well especially if you are handling multiple contributors, authors, and guest authors. Here are some useful WordPress plugins to help you streamline and monitor your content activities:

Postrunner

Postrunner is a guest posting system connecting authors with site owners. This plugin facilitates the process of hooking a WordPress site into Postrunner to receive guest posts. PostRunner streamlines the guest posting process for authors and publishers who want to share content, but don’t want to deal with the normal prospecting, pitching, and negotiating traditional guest posting requires. Authors get abundant guest posting opportunities; publishers get quality content for their blog or website while maintaining total editorial control.

Really Simple Guest Post Plugin

Really Simple Guest Post Plugin allows your visitors to submit posts even without registration (as a guest author). Anyone will be able to submit post and it will be added automatically as a pending post for review, approval or rejection. Posts will be directly saved into WordPress database and will show up in Admin Dashboard as pending post with given Title, Description, Category and Tags.Moderator will be able to review and approve them as needed. Authors Name, Author url and email will be added as custom field.

Frontend Publishing

Frontend Publishing is a lightweight plugin that allows you to accept guest posts/articles without giving your members access to the sensitive WordPress control panel. It will automatically filter out all the posts that don’t meet the submission guidelines of your website. It can be a huge time saver if you have a very popular blog or article directory. You can allow members with a certain user level to publish posts instantly. All other posts are added to the ‘pending’ queue.

Custom Content Type Manager

The Custom Content Type Manager (CCTM) is a WordPress plugin that allows users to create custom content types (a.k.a. post_types) with virtually any type of custom field. This plugin allows users to create custom content types (also known as post types) and standardized custom fields for each, including dropdowns, checkboxes, and images and more. You can select multiple images, posts, or media items and store them in a single field making it easy for you to store a gallery of images or long lists of values. This plugin also lets you export and import your content definitions, making it easy to ensure a similar structure between multiple sites.

Ajax Content Filter

Ajax Post Content Filter allows you to filter your content with a drop down box. Just install the plugin, activate and open the ACF Posts located in the left side menu bar. You will need to add new ACF posts by filling up the post title and placing your content in the editor then publish it. Simply put the shortcode [ACF] in a page or post in admin. You can also put the shortcode ajax_content_filter() in your template file and you will get the simple dropdown box on your page at front side.

Fancier Author Box

Give identity to your single or multi-author WordPress website with Fancier Author Box – a WordPress plugin that allows you or your authors to connect with your audience on all levels and encourages people to read the author’s bio and engage on major social networks. You can modify display settings and color settings according to your preferences.

Editorial Calendar Plugin

The Editorial Calendar Plugin gives you an overview of your blog and when each post will be published. You can drag and drop to move posts, edit posts right in the calendar, and manage your entire blog. See all of your posts and when they’ll be posted. You can drag and drop to change your post dates, manage your drafts with our new drafts drawer, quick edit post titles, contents, and times, publish posts or manage drafts, easily see the status of your posts, manage posts from multiple authors.

Custom About Author

This plugin acknowledges authors for their post by displaying a brief biography about them at the end of their post. It is perfect if you have multiple guest bloggers on your website and they do not each have a user account. It also gives an added incentive for bloggers to write guest posts on your site. Multiple custom profiles can be created and they take preference over website user profiles. You also have the option to specify a specific profile to display for each post. Custom profiles are completely configurable, it can include links to social media (such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn & Google+) or you can specify any HTML/text you want to display. This plugin displays the author profile at the end of the post. It gives you have the option to display the author’s website user profile or a custom profile.

WP Biographia

This plugin allows you to add a customisable biography to posts, RSS feeds, pages, archives and to each post on your blog’s landing page as well as via a widget in your sidebar. It integrates out of the box with the information that can be provided in each user’s profile and supports custom post types. Display of the Biography Box can be hidden on a global or per user basis for posts, pages and custom post types as well as on a per category basis.

How To Get Started Building Your Authority Site Using WordPress

WordPress is one of the most popular and most dynamic publishing platforms today. If you are planning to build your authority site from scratch, get the foundations right by building on solid ground. If you are wondering about the basic things you need to do to get started on your authority site check out the items listed below to help you out. This checklist can be a helpful guide for beginners and serve as a handy reminder to experienced WordPress users as well.

  • Secure your domain name. Choose your name wisely. Check how it will appear in the url as some words read differently without spacing in between. You don’t want to be stuck with a name you will regret. (eg. Top Ten Bands Hits.com might mean something else when the words are all squished together.)

  • Get a webhost like Bluehost.com to host your website’s content. Take note of features like unlimited domains, bandwidth, downtime, etc.

  • Install and configure WordPress as your publishing platform. Some web hosts include WordPress in their website packages and offer free installation. Take advantage of these features.

  • Choose a WordPress theme and install. There are tons of WordPress themes available, some free. Choose a premium theme over a free one as this is generally more stable and the developer/author usually offers and provides customer support for theme installation, issues and bugs.

  • Install basic plugins like Akismet, Google Analytics, WP SEO, etc. to beef up your site.

  • Set up pages for important standard information such as: About Us, Terms of Use or Terms of Service, Contact Us, and Privacy Policy. These add credibility to your website.

  • Add and integrate social networking links like Facebook (business page), Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Linkedin, etc. into your website. These networks help promote your content and will generate traffic for you if optimized properly.

  • Fill your site with fresh content based on the keyword research you’ve been working on (read more about this in our previous article: Building your Authority Site using the Google Keyword Planner Tool).

These are just some of the practical steps you can do as you start building your authority site using WordPress. If you have more tips and techniques, please share by leaving a comment. We’d love to hear from you.

Mastering The Perfect Elevator Pitch to Help Build Your Authority Site

Elevator Pitch Defined

An elevator pitch, elevator speech, or elevator statement is a short summary used to quickly and simply define a person, profession, product, service, organization or event and its value proposition.

The name “elevator pitch” reflects the idea that it should be possible to deliver the summary in the time span of an elevator ride, or approximately thirty seconds to two minutes. The term itself comes from a scenario of an accidental meeting with someone important in the elevator. If the conversation inside the elevator in those few seconds is interesting and value adding, the conversation will continue after the elevator ride or end in exchange of business card or a scheduled meeting. (source: Wikipedia)

Part of establishing the identity of your authority site is creating a catchy and easy to remember description about everything you are all about. Many businesses fail to recognize the value of the elevator pitch for their companies and miss out on opportunities to connect with their target market. Some think that this technique borders on cheesy especially when done wrong. However, not recognizing its power and potential translates to many lost opportunities to market and “sell” yourself. If you can’t give a concise and succinct reason for the existence of your business, you confuse your target market as well.

The Internet is overloaded with virtual billboards vying for visitors attention non-stop. You need to be able to deliver your pitch and make it unforgettable – make it spark your website visitors’ curiosity.

What You Need to Craft Your Elevator Pitch:

Structure

  • Be specific. Use simple and easy to understand words
  • Offer a solution to an existing problem. Make it short and sweet.
  • Provide them with a specific call to action – visit your website, subscribe, register, etc.

Target Market

  • Address the appropriate target market in your pitch. You can later on expand to a qualified market and the general available market eventually. Tailor your pitch to match different segments of your target market but keep the core message consistent.

Delivery

  • Your website, social network, and all your other channels should be consistent as far as delivering your key message is concerned.
  • Believe in your own message and delivery will be natural. Try not to be too verbose when explaining yourself. People are turned off by the typical “car” or “insurance” salesman types. They easily see through all the hype but on the other hand, will appreciate genuine customer care and concern.

Tips on How to Build Your Authority Site

Building a high ranking authority site is two-fold. Not only do you aim to make your domain rank well but you need to make sure that you also work on the individual pages of your website. This means that as you continue to add quality content to your site, in tandem with your SEO efforts, both your domain and page authority should be progressively increasing in both rank and authority.

There are a few things you need to make sure happens on your website as you slowly build your way up. Here are some tips on what you need to do:

Increase user time on site by:

  • using strategically located video – video usually located in the middle of the post tend to make readers go through the whole post as opposed to one located at the top.
  • placing related links in the middle of the content – notice how many of the mega websites have links to related articles sandwiched within the main post
  • using scrolling galleries where the user does not have to leave the page – eg. Mashable

Post high quality content regularly. In Google’s eyes, high quality content = high quality site. What counts? Here are Google’s guidelines:

  • Would you trust the information presented in this article?
  • Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
  • Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
  • Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
  • Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
  • Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
  • Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
  • Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
  • How much quality control is done on content?
  • Does the article describe both sides of a story?
  • Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
  • Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
  • Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
  • For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
  • Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
  • Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
  • Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
  • Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
  • Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
  • Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
  • Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
  • Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
  • Would users complain when they see pages from this site?
  • (source: Google Webmaster Central)

Go social. Increase your website’s visibility by building and expanding your social network. Be creative in creating post/social network headlines and give people a reason to share your content. Target virality.

Try these tips and see how it works for you. We’d love to hear your stories on how these have helped. Do share.

Elegant Themes Releases First Ever Free WordPress Theme

Great news from Elegant Themes! Elegant Themes just released it’s first ever FREE WordPress theme and it is a gem. Check out Serene – a clean, minimalist and absolutely beautiful blogging theme that will surely inspire your writing muse. Its modern and yet elegant design create that easy to read feel that will make visitors want to linger a little longer.

Customizing is definitely easy using the Theme customizer giving you freedom to be creative with it and match your blog to your personality and writing style. Capture your every mood in every post with the use of any of the available 6 post formats to choose from (article, gallery, audio, link, video, and quote). Post on the go and be confident that your blog will look amazing on any mobile or handheld device because of this theme’s responsive design. Organize your posts and color code each section or post type with custom colors and select fonts. The theme’s overall typographic style is clean and conducive to encouraging reading. Prefer some other type of font? You can easily change it to any of your font preferences in the theme’s admin panel. Social networking is also a breeze with the built in social networking buttons that can easily be configured in the Customizer panel.

Overall, you get the tried and tested Elegant Themes quality with all the basic things you need to set up an amazing looking blog at absolutely zero cost. This free WordPress theme includes features such as:

  • nElegant Design
  • Secure and Valid Code
  • 6 Different Post Formats
  • Browser Compatibility
  • Unlimited Colors
  • Unparalleled Support

Serene Free-mium WordPress Theme is available for download in the WordPress.org WP theme Directory. An exclusive version with additional bells and whistles will soon be made available to Elegant Themes members and subscribers.

Get Serene Now For Free!

WordPress Plugins To Try This September 2013

Enhance your WordPress site with these useful plugins that will help beef up features and functions you already have:

Ajax Portfolio Grid for WordPress

Ajax Portfolio Grid plugin allows for smooth loading and reloading of pages because of its Ajax feature. Features include: flexible columns, Youtube and Vimeo support, Drag and drop support, and hardware accelerated touch swipe support among a few. This robust plugin is built around the MVC core and makes full use of HTML5, CSS3, PHP 5.2+, and jQuery 1.7 – latest technologies that allow it to render fast and lightweight results including effects that are responsive and adapt to most if not all handheld and mobile devices.

Paper Grid

Paper Grid is a lightweight and powerful content grid plugin for WordPress that allows you to showcase your team, your services and products, or any other type of content in a dynamic and interactive way. You can select images, icons, change colors and you can also easily share your team members or even content on your social networking sites. The Content Grid frontend css file is only 5 KB and the javascript file is only 2KB making it really lightweight which means your website’s loading performance will be fast.

Mobile.nav

Mobile.nav is an easy to install and easy to use mobile and responsive navigation menu plugin for WordPress that creates an awesome mobile menu for your website. It supports top level + nesting up to 3 sub levels (4 levels totally) but can expand to how many you need by copying few lines of css. This plugin uses the native WordPress built-in design language and easily integrates with the WordPress menu system and supports expanding menu tree. Mobile.nav works on iOS, Android and Windows Mobile.

Hashtag for WordPress

The Hashtag WordPress plugin uses the new auto-complete system in the WordPress editor which allows you to set up an integrated hashtag system for your website. You can easily add a hashtag (#word) in your posts based on # character and on other hashtags already existing on your site. This plugin filters all the sentences containing the hashtag and displays them with links and thumbnails to the related posts. The #hashtag word link and the #hashtag page can also be easily customized (font, border, radius, padding, margin, etc.) according to your preferences.

FormCraft WordPress Form Builder

Create your own stylized forms with FormCraft WordPress Form Builder plugin – an AJAX powered form interface that allows you to create responsive forms and add as many as 23 fields (conditional or not), add multi-columns, save form progress, generate form analytics, integrate MailChimp, Campaign Monitor and Aweber and send to auto responders, embed objects, maps and videos, upload multiple images (retina-optimized), add form validation, get all submissions in your inbox, and many other useful features.

Frontend Builder

Frontend Builder WordPress plugin allows you to design your web page using intuitive frontend and backend options and a drag & drop system that allows you to add all the content that you need regardless of the template that you are using. This plugin is an easy-to-use solution for all users regardless of their skill level whether as designers or developers. Developers will find this plugin useful because they can assign this plugin to their templates with their own shortcodes and enable their potential users to design their own web pages using their own template’s elements. Other features include: clone options, WordPress shortcodes, pre-made UI system, live preview, and tons of other options.

Tips To Maximize Marketing To Your Local Mass Traffic

A panel of experienced resource speakers including Mike Cooch, Kevin Wilke, Jack Mize, Martin Maybruck among others shared valuable insights and wisdom (T&C Summit 2013) on how to handle local traffic.

Here’s a summary of some of the key points these experts shared and see how it applies to your own local marketing targets.

The top 3 strategies for getting clients are:

  • networking at local events
  • speaking at local events
  • direct mail

The top 3 online strategies for clients are:

  • videos (get ranked quickly) Tip: put your business phone number in the title
  • directories
  • social media

Effective Facebook Page contests include the ff. elements that can contribute to your list building efforts, free referrals, viral reach, etc.:

  • name – for brand positioning
  • video – builds trust
  • prizes – aligns with market and doubles attendance
  • fan gate – increases “likes”
  • webinar – adds value

Follow up with people over the phone and offer your services

Build your business eventually to be sold

  • build assets instead of just a source of income
  • keep your financials clean
  • document systems and processes
  • target margins to be at par or better than industry standards
  • think of transferable contracts
  • recurring revenue
  • proven sales model

Your number 1 job is to sell

  • Small businesses are not actively looking for someone to market for them. You have to sell to small businesses.
  • Focus on one vertical to start. It is the biggest secret to growing fast
  • Leverage channels (conventions, webinars, newsletters, trade shows)

Use tools and resources to help you find leads

  • Smartwebinar – automated prospecting webinar for local marketers
  • Localizer lead tool – find local prospects fast
  • Lead kahuna – find leads with bad online reputation and turn them into prospecting material to target them

Fast local lead copy works for landing pages, video scripts, online classifieds, biz listings, social media properties.

Small businesses want mainly is fast sales. Mobile consumers are among the highest percentage of searchers for local businesses but not all local businesses have websites.

If you are running a small business your local business must be listed in apps such as:

  • Google maps
  • Yahoo
  • Mapquest
  • Yelp

Local businesses owners need to build a custom mobile landing page catered to their target audience.

Your friendly neighborhood shop could be the next big thing to happen. Check out opportunities to connect and network.

Update For Best Theme Coming Soon

Good news for all you Best-ies out there! We’ve heard you and we are coming up with an update to our Best Theme soon. We’ve added a lot of features and functionalities based on what we think will make the theme better integrating and incorporating many of your suggestions and input. We’d like to thank all those who have downloaded the theme as you have inspired us to push a little more. But wait there’s more!

Lots of exciting things are in the offing here in Blogex and we are working on many cool developments to serve you better. Don’t forget to bookmark our page, subscribe, or add us to your social networks to get the latest news on Blogex.

Great things up ahead!

Content Auditing – Is Your Content Up To Par?

“High quality content”, “Content is king.” – we often hear these phrases and although we know that content matters a lot, especially to Google, how many of us pay particular attention to what we post online? If you’ve been publishing large volumes of content on your website for how many years, have you ever taken the time to assess the quality of the content you have published? Have you ever conducted a content inventory, or better yet, a content audit on everything that appears on your website? Do you think managing your content will impact your traffic and conversion efforts or is its effect purely cosmetic?

A content inventory is the process and the result of cataloging the entire contents of a website. An allied practice—a content audit—is the process of evaluating that content.(source: Wikipedia)

WHY: Reasons for Conducting Content Audit

There are many reasons why you should consider conducting a content audit on your website especially for legacy content. You could use the collected data to evaluate specific functions and features of your website and its contents and optimize it to its fullest potential. Here are some reasons for conducting a content audit on your website(s):

  • Review your site’s architecture, structure, and navigational systems to make it more efficient and user friendly
  • Redesign, reconstruct, or renovate your website to make it more current or more responsive to the demographics of your current users. Consider the mobile market.
  • Migrate content to-from another site(s), from static pages to content management system (CMS)
  • Manage content quality, the amount of content, relevance, its layout presentation and design
  • Identify orphaned pages, content bloat, redundant pages that do not meet Google’s algorithm standards
  • Gather and analyze statistics as to user behaviour and interactivity on your website
  • Determine and identify popular and unpopular pages that get the most or the least visits – recognize effective content
  • Identify keywords and maximize organic search terms that drive traffic to your website

“Content audits are critical to understanding and evaluating the performance of your content against business goals, user needs, editorial standards, and performance factors such as search engine optimization and content use or web analytics. They bring value to your website project and on-going maintenance tasks by allowing you to carefully catalog and analyze your content structures, patterns, and consistency. Content audits tailored to your organization’?s content goals will reveal the highest quantity of specific opportunities for content improvement”.(source: content-insight.com)

HOW: Content Audit Strategy

Conducting a full-blown Content Audit especially on content heavy websites should be strategic and well-planned because it can be tedious and overwhelming. Strategy is key. Tactics can be modified and adapted. Some companies even choose to “throw out content” and start fresh. You can choose to conduct your content audit according to your needs and specifications in several ways:

  • Full Content Audit – Complete and comprehensive list of every content including all pages and all assets (downloadable or attached files etc.)
  • Partial Content Audit – Top hierarchy and subcategories or subset list
  • Content Sampling – Examine representative samples of content

WHO: Content Auditors:

  • Website designers and managers
  • Information architects and taxonomists
  • Content managers and developers
  • Content strategists and marketers
  • SEO managers

WHAT: Important Content Audit Items

  • Identify and document content volume and types
  • Identify and document the current content structure
  • Assess whether the content is being used
  • Document inconsistent content presentation

TO DO: Simple Content Audit Action Plan Sample

Conduct a Content Inventory

Create a content inventory spreadsheet and catalog. It may or may not include the following items based on your specs or based on the order of the most significant parts of your website:

  • ID, numbering or index
  • Page Title
  • Page Name
  • Page Type (homepage, navigation, ecommerce, blog, etc.)
  • URL
  • Level in the site (hierarchy)
  • Content type (multimedia, image, video, doc, pdf, HTML)
  • Owner/maintainer/author (content rights)
  • Comments
  • Character count or content size
  • Topics, tags, category, keywords, meta data
  • Date created
  • Last updated
  • Related files
  • Broken links (linking practices)
  • Duplicate content
  • Short Description or Notes
  • Alt tags on multimedia (images, video, audio, etc.)
  • PageViews
  • Unique Visitors
  • Bounce Rate
  • Page Authority

Track your content on the Internet, social networking sites, and contributions posted on other websites

Monitor the quality of your content as pertaining to topic, tone, consistency or compliance with your branding or marketing strategies

Assess and evaluate your content: keep, fix, improve, update, redirect, archive, remove, delete or trash

Use content analysis tools to get the job done if necessary (Excel, Content Analysis Tool, etc.)

Make an offline copy

If the job is too daunting, hire a Content Auditing Services Firm or a Content Audit Professional

The initial stages of the whole process can be time consuming and overwhelming but once you have a system in place that’s current and updated, you will be able to glean insight from all the information you’ve gathered and steer your website towards a richer, exceptional, more substantial, Google algorithm friendly content that will keep visitors coming back for more.