When Your Blog Fronted Business Takes Off
If (like me) you run a business which is fronted by your blog, and that business really takes off, you will find yourself in the annoying but pleasant position of not having enough time to keep your stream of blog posts going.
I find myself spending the majority of my time serving my clients needs and have very little time left over to write quality blog posts, this is an enviable position to be in, but if people are coming to you because of your blog, you also need to keep that quality content going, here is my list of things to do to lessen the burden of writing so you can concentrate on your clients/business.
Let Your Blog Readers Know
If people are used to a certain posting frequency from you, then it is only fair that you let them know, a quick blog post disguised as a list of things to make up for you lack of time will do.
Here we go; my business has taken off and I will only be posting once per week. Thanks for your understanding, I have a large archive of useful posts feel free to browse through them in the mean time.
Reduce Posting Frequency
Look at your current posting frequency, if you are finding the burden of writing quality content and serving the needs of your business are too much, then cut back on your posting frequency. No one is going to worry too much if you post five times per week and cut it down to three, but remember to let your readers know.
Stockpile Posts
When you have a quiet period, run off as many blog posts as you can, keep them in draft mode and publish them in line with your new posting schedule.
I find I don’t always have time to write the full post so I outline the idea I want to write about, with paragraph headings and quick notes and what I want to write. You will be surprised how much this speeds up the writing process. You have a blog post already researched and thought about which just needs some flesh on the bones. This stops the dreaded writers block when you need to crank out a post with little time to dedicate to the writing process.
Recycle Posts
You may have a post languishing in your archive that no-one visits, that you were not too happy with, or that needs an update.
Get this post out, rework it and re-publish it by setting a new published date. This will bring that article back to the top of your blog for people to read.
Warning, your long term readers may smell a rat, be transparent about what you have done. For example I could recycle one of my plugin reviews, and add an updated header like this:
Plugin XXX has been updated and the functionality has change quite a bit, so I have updated my plugin review and brought it back to the top of my blog post list, I hope you enjoy it ….
Create Series Posts
This is another way to recycle your blog posts, and that is to create a series link list of related posts. An example from my site would be to bring together all of my posts on comments, write an introduction on the benefits of comments, and then link to all of my other posts.
A bit of a cheat, but a very useful resource for people wanting to learn more about WordPress commenting.
Run A Poll
Polls are very quick to create, and are great ways to interact with your audience. I wrote a blog post on Adding a Poll to Your Blog
Loading ...Get Guest Posters
If you don’t know the benefit of guest posting, check out Guest Posting Like A Pro, but as the blog owner if you invite guest posting, you have a ready made blog post, fresh content with a new voice, a brilliant way to keep your blog current.
I am open to enquieries on guest posting, please send me a message from my contact page with details of the post you would like to write.
Hire a Writer
If you business is booming, surely you have some spare cash to bring in a blogsmith? Pay by the post freelance bloggers are not that expensive, check out the Problogger Job Board for ideas of costs and as a way to hire writers.
For me this is something I am not that interested in, I am very protective of my blog, it has my voice and I want it to stay that way (or am I just too cheap, who knows 
). Would bringing in staff writers dilute that? I don’t know your comments would be appreciated.
Make Time
If your business took off because of your blog, and you are getting clients because of the expertise you display on your blog, you need to invest time in writing and marketing your blog.
I have blocked out one session per week for writing blog posts, I am not writing with the same frequency I used to when my business was not as developed, but I want to keep the quality up and build my blog subscriber base (and potential client base) to a much higher level. Hopefully I have the right mix of frequency and quality.
What’s Your Take
I would love to hear what you think about this subject, and it’s cousin of keeping your social media makreting going when all of yur time is being given over to your client requirements.
Drop me a message in the comments section below.
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Mass Update Your Out Of Date Plugins
A very useful,but not very well advertised function of WordPress has been added with version 2.9.x. I thought a quick blog post to show people how to use it was in order.
As of 2.9.x you can now to a mass update of all your out of date plugins.
Tell Me Where it Is
It would seem logical to place the mass update under the plugins section of the dashboard, perhaps under the plugins requiring update section, but no, that would be too obvious.
This very useful function has been positioned on the same page where you perform an update of your core wordpress files.
http://{YOUBLOG}/wp-admin/update-core.php
What Does It Look Like
Here is a screen dump of the page from my blog:
How Does It Work?
Click on select all, or manually choose all plugins to update and then click on upgrade plugins and it does the whole shooting match in on fell swoop. Excellent, if you have a lot of plugins to update this eases the maintenance burden.
Backup
It’s probably a good idea to backup your system before you click update.
Wrap Up
There have been plugins to do this for quite some time, I am glad to see this added to the core functionality but why conceal it in such a weird location.
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How To Display Weather On A WordPress Blog
I am working with the owners of a blog who provide a news service to a resort island in the southern henisphere, and part of hteir requirements was a weather update on the top of their blog.
This is the first time I have been called upon to do this, so I though I would share my findings with you lot.
Weather Services
There are a number of weather services out there who coallate reports and make them available as web services. This seemed the best bet, plugin to one of these services and use their data.
The eventual service I chose was http://www.accuweather.com/
Match Weather Services with a plugin
Once I had selected my weather service, the next step was to either write some code to pull in the data from Accuweather or to find a plugin that did it already. I’m all for not re-inventing the wheel, and I found a number of plugins that used Accuweather. I finally selected wp-forecast http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-forecast/
I chose this because it had the ability to code the weather into the theme through php calls along with widgets. The level of data provided was very good, and it looked great on my clients site.
Configuration
WP_forecast is a fairly simple thing to use, install it in the normal plugin fashion, then retrieve your location from Accuweather. It will come in a format similar to this:
EUR|UK|UK179|NEWCASTLE|
I simply searched on the homepage for my city, and this code was appended to the end of the URL, a quick cut and paste, and I had weather for cold old Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
There is a lot of data to add from temperature, wind speed and direction, humidity and loads more. A very thorough service.
The Current Eeather In Sunny Newcastle UK Is:
I installed wp-forecast on my blog and screen captured a view of the widget so you can see what it looks like
And That’s The Weather For Today
Having a weather forecast may not be everyone’s thing, but if your blog is the front end for a bricks and mortar site, where people come and do things (can I be more vague) then this may be for you.
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Guest Posting Like A Pro
When Chris Garret of AuthorityBlogger.com and co-author of the ProBlogger book with Darren Rowse launches something, I usually sit up and take notice
Guest Posting Info Product
Chris has release a new e-book / membership site which takes you through the process of guest posting to build up high quality links, build your authority in niches where no-one knows you and much more.
Cheap As Chips But Full of Info
The e-book is currently selling for the huge sum of $7, but this introductory offer is set to end on the 11th January, so grab it now while it
Do I LIke Guest Posting?
Yes i do, my guest posts on ProBlogger have served me very well, generating links from an authoritative site and attention of it’s readers, guest posting is an excellent way to market your blog.
Check out my blog post on guest posting Guest Posting Makes You Attractive To The Opposite Sex – Fact!!!
Get Your Copy Now
For more information and details of the e-book click on the link below – full disclosure, this is an affiliate link, Chris Garret is an authority in the blogging world, I recommend him wholeheartedly.
GUESTPOSTING.INFO>>
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New Year Blog Tidy Up
Happy New Year to you all, it’s the time of year when people are embarking on New Year’s resolutions to change habits or accomplish new things.
I thought it might be a good time to give your blog a quick health check and get into some new year blog maintenance habits, here is my list of blog resolutions you could make.
Keep Your Site Up To Date
Make it a priority to keep your WordPress code and plugin code up to date. The updates that are released are for security, bug fix and additional functionality reasons, all of these are good things for your blog.
New Habit – Once a week check for update to plugins and WordPress, install them as required. Please remember to back up first.
Get Rid Of Unused Plugins
There is a more than even chance that you have installed a plugin and are not using the functionality it provides. Goto your dashboard and look through your list of plugins, find the ones you don’t recognise, don’t use, are not really that important, and delete them. Plugins cause an overhead on your site’s performance
New Habit – Every few months audit your plugins and delete the ones you don’t use or need.
Tidy Your Database
This tidy up tip goes hand in hand with removing plugins. You will find as you add and remove plugins additional tables and options are added to your database. This can increase the size of your DB, in turn causing a performance overhead.
New Habit – review you database and remove any fields or tables you do not need. WARNING this is an advanced topic, backup your database.
Tidy Your Categories
This is something often forgotten about, you create a new category, you add one blog post to it and never use that category again. It’s time to reconcile for ease of navigating your site.
New Habit – review you categories, and remove any unnecessary ones, re-categorising your posts as you go.
Backup
Are you doing it enough, can you recover from a crash? It doesn’t need much more than that, as a blogger you are only as good as your last backup.
New Habit – backup, go now, install plugins, backup, I mean it now, are you still here?
Tighten The Security
I see a lot of blogs that have been hacked, do yourself a favour
- change your default table prefix
- harden your passwords
- change your admin login name
- Apply security patches/updates as they appear
- obfuscate your WordPress version
- .. the list goes on, install the following plugin to see any known gaps you have. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-security-scan/
New habit – be ware that hackers target WordPress sites, they are a low hanging fruit because there are so many, keep your site secure.
Rounding It All Up
Give your blog the tech. equivalent of a new years detox ready for the coming years content. If you are not up to it book a health check at Dr WP Dude’s Colonic Flushing Clinic
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