WordPress – Tactical Tips
Yesterday’s The Business of WordPress conference was full of tactical tips as well as higher-level strategies and visions for the future. I’ll address the former here and the latter in a subsequent post. (Note: see my post “WordPress Takes Over the World!” for previous coverage.)
Panel on "Interacting With Your Audience via Email and Advanced Contact Forms" featuring Colleen Jones, Sandi Solow, and others
Tactical tips, from a variety of presenters, included:
- Using WordPress.com if you’re just getting started and want WordPress to host a simple blog for you. Use WordPress.org if you want to host your own blog and want more flexibility and advanced features. (I recommend the latter approach – ready about my own painful lesson in platform ownership. And here’s a writeup on how you’ll benefit from links more if you host your own blog.)
- Have a call-out for your email program on every page of the site (in the navigation bar, header, or side bar. Note that the email signup form should be different from your regular contact us form.
- Wufoo.com is a free program that’ll take the info that a new email subscriber enters into the online form and automatically post it in your ESP (email marketing system) so you don’t have to transcribe it or enter it yourself. (These two tips courtesy of my friend Sandi Solow at I Send Your Email.)
- It’s easy to include videos using WordPress. Keep them under two minutes – closer to one minute is even better. You can use the Flash or H.264 format – the latter is usually preferred because it plays on iPhones and iPads, while Flash, famously, doesn’t.
The most useful WordPress plug-ins were also discussed, including:
- All in One SEO, which this blog uses. It allows you to tailor title tags and meta description tags for each blog post/page.
- WordPress.com Stats, the WordPress version of Google Analytics.
- XML-Sitemap automatically updates the site’s XML sitemap every time a new post is published, which helps search engines find each new page quickly.
- Gravity Forms makes it easy to create contact forms with whatever fields you’d like.
- WordPress-to-Lead captures lead information and automatically imports them into SalesForce.
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Hi Stacy – thanks for the mention in this post! I’m sorry I didn’t see you at the conference to say hello in person. I want to point out that Wufoo doesn’t auto-feed into EVERY ESP, but there are a few of them that they partner with. I’d suggest someone check Wufoo’s partners page before going too far down that path. Hope to see you soon!