Showing posts with label WordPress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WordPress. Show all posts

Saturday, September 22, 2012

WordPress Blogging Tool for Small Business

WordPress
WordPress (Photo credit: Adriano Gasparri)

Since leaving the corporate world, I have had many questions about what exactly I do. Questions arise every day, what is Word Press? What is Corporate Flunkie? What do you do as a blogger? What is affliliate marketing? What exactly do you do now? Well I am going to start with the first question and do my best to answer.

WordPress is a FREE web software that anyone can use to create and update a blog or even a web-site. You install the program on a web-server (or host account, such as Host Gator, which is what I use). Then with the user interface you can create pages, posts, write articles, upload images. Everything is managed from the administration panel that you have a user id and password too.

WordPress Functionality:
  • Create pages (ex: About Me, Contact Me, Shop, Latest Update)
  • Allows you to write your articles in chronological order, newest are always listed first.
  • Utilizing the Themes tool you can give your site personality with a design.
  • Visitors can leave comments to your articles or posts.
  • As the administrator you decide who/what comments you will allow.
  • You can create menus to make your site easier for visitors.
  • There are built in FREE Plugins that you can download which add extra functions to your site.
WordPress has been mistaken many times as a program utilized ONLY for blogging. This is not true. This misconception is because that is how it originated. However, today its users span a broad range from TechCrunch, to TED, CNN, and National Football League, NBC Sports to name a few. Companies from all over the globe are utilizing WordPress to update their websites. Over 350 million people view more than 2.5 billion pages each month. In addition, it hosts blogs written in over 120 languages. Below is a breakdown of the top 10 languages taken right from WordPress website.
  1. English 66%
  2. Spanish 8.7%
  3. Portuguese 6.5%
  4. Indonesian 3.5%
  5. Italian 2%
  6. German 1.8%
  7. French 1.4%
  8. Russian 1.1%
  9. Vietnamese 1.1%
  10. Swedish 1.0%
According to WordPress, as of 2011 over 100,000 new WordPresses are created everyday around the world. In addition, they show no signs of this slowing down. Publishers are using it to create all kinds of sites beyond blogs - news sites, company sites, magazines, social networks, sports sites, and more. Their showcase contains many interesting examples.

Top 5 reasons to use WordPress:
  • SEO-they offer many SEO benefits FREE of charge.
  • Content-you easily create and edit pages using a simple text editor, NO HTML to learn.
  • Extensions-FREE design themes, contact forms and cool features without hiring a web designer.
  • Support-Thousands of web developers found on Google to assist you with any issues.
  • One-Click Installation-many web hosting providers utilize the quick install system including HostGator and others.
Many have made comparisons of Facebook to WordPress and even going as far to state that it may be on its way to being the next Facebook. I'm not so sure that I agree with that and here's why. WordPress has an appeal to those who want to create a strong presence online. But not everyone has the desire to do this.

Blogging offers a way for individuals to have their "own place" online, if you will. Many of those using Facebook do so for social networking and promoting their own sites. In addition, Facebook has made their software so user friendly that the average person with very little knowledge of computers can utilize it. With WordPress it takes a certain level of skill to navigate the software as well as focus, to post blogs frequently.

Overall, WordPress is a user friendly blogging/website software to use. Not to mention a powerful tool for online business. As with any software it has some technical tasks that could be worked through but it's totally FREE and with that price, one can't find too much to complain about!


Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/7286059

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Sunday, September 16, 2012

Blogging via Zemanta Social Plugin

Image representing Zemanta as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

I discovered Zemanta a year or so ago, and it makes life that bit easier for the beginner to intermediate blogger. When you are writing a blog, you have other things to think about aside from the actual words. Sometimes you need good images, other times you need to quote from another blog and sometimes you will need to add references or links to explain uncommon terms.

Adding an Image - When you add an image from elsewhere on the internet, it's probably subject to copyright and needs certain things even if you have permission to use it - like accreditation and or a link back to the owner. When Zemanta is downloaded, in the right hand side tool bar will be thumbnail suggestions of suitable images. Right now it's showing me the firefox logo as a suitable match to the text I have typed so far. If you have a Flickr account, then you can add images from that when you set it up.

In text links. Underneath the text box as I type is a list of suggestions that may need explaining, so far thumbnail, copyright, Zemanta, and Firefox are all appearing.

Tags - When I have finished typing I can move back to the right hand side toolbar and have a look and see what tags it suggests for the post, if I like them then I only have to click on them and they will be added.

Related articles - if you don't use a plugin on Wordpress for related links, or use another blogging platform, then Zemanta will also suggest related articles that you can add yourself. If you click my sources, you can suggest where to get related links from. It can be other blogs you own, or blogs you like by your favourite authors. Again it's all in the right hand tool bar. It allows you to link to other blogs with ease and in time, your blogs will be added and people will link to your content if they like it - it can be a good traffic builder.

At the end of every blog post you will see a little orange icon, saying get Zemified (or similar). If you click this it will allow you to take parts of this post and link back to it, in other words it makes things very easy to quote extracts from this blog and any others you find with the little orange icon.

The last nifty little trick Zemanta has up it's sleeve is very useful to those that monetise their blogs, it allows you to add your Amazon Associates ID. Then if you write book reviews or movie reviews, then it will add to the list of in text links the most suitable Amazon links for you to use. It has the default for it's own amazon account, so if you are planning to use this you will need to add your own details as soon as you can.

Hope you find Zemanta useful, I certainly do. I started just using images, and the refining tool to search for specific images and have gradually used it more and more.

When you install Zemanta as a browser extension, it will automatically load on any blogging platform.
Currently supported platforms include: WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, TypePad, Posterous, Movable Type, Drupal. Also, be sure to know that it's only installed in the browser you are using (it will not appear on your other browsers/computers.)


Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/3507353

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Thursday, September 6, 2012

BlogUpp! Review

Image representing BlogUpp as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

BlogUpp is the all-in-one blog promotion service and selected blogger network connecting via blog widget, social web cross-posting, content discovery toolbar and blog directory, with Premium offering for bloggers and advertisers. And this - is the blog of the service.


What makes BlogUpp! different?

  • No registration and no account required
  • No email and privacy exposure
  • No ad submission and no efforts
  • No animation and annoying ads
  • Cheat-proof and fair sharing
  • WordPress platform and alike friendly
  • Targeted readers reach
  • Best de facto exchange ratio (10:9)
In another words, it is highly recommended for blog exposure and beginners. You've got to TRY!

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