Everyone wants their blog to be successful, but the more traffic and attention your blog gets, the more managing it can take a toll on you.
Whether you want to reference old posts quickly, encourage community interaction, promote your blog on social bookmarking services (or all of the above!), you’ll learn how to do just that in today’s post.
Keep in mind, this was written for established blogs looking to take the next step toward profitable web marketing. If you’re just getting started, here’s a list of free Wordpress plugins you’ll want to install to give your blog the best possible beginning!
Now, onto the plugins!
1. Insights – One of my personal favorites and a great productivity-booster. Insights will let you find related posts in your blog, Google, Wikipedia and other sources with a simple search. No more combing through your entire blog to find that one elusive post you want to reference!
2. WP Comment Remix – Gives you total control over the management, appearance and layout of your blog comments. Includes features such as:
• Highlighting the most frequent commenters, making it easy to reward contributors and encourage others to participate more.
• Comment tags that let you and your readers find something specific without having to wade through hundreds of comments on a post.
• Control the look, feel and layout of your comments area without any programming or Wordpress editing experience.
3. Twitter for Wordpress – Displays your Twitter “tweets” on Wordpress. An easy way to get your blog readers to potentially follow you on Twitter. – If you’d like the reverse, which tweets to your followers about your blog posts, use TweetMyBlog.
4. RewardingPosts - Encourage people to link to your blog by giving away something free for those that link to you. Installation is quick and easy, and it’s a great way to spread the word about that new ebook you just wrote!
5. Wordpress Automatic Upgrade – In just a few clicks, you can update your Wordpress installation to the latest stable version without any programming know-how. The sooner you upgrade, the sooner you can protect your blog from hackers and spammers that exploit holes in older versions of Wordpress.
6. PHPBay Pro – Seamlessly add links to eBay products in your blog posts. Ideal for niche marketing websites looking to earn extra cash from eBay’s affiliate program. Adding keyword-rich content from sites like eBay can also help boost your own search engine ranking.
7. CommentLuv - Share the love by linking to your commenter’s last blog post automatically. Fortunately it prevents you (the blog owner) from linking to your own blog in the reply
8. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) – Show related posts after your current blog entry to encourage your visitors to read more posts. The explanation of how it works is a bit techie, but the installation and setup is a breeze.
There you have it! Give any and all of these plugins and try and free up your time, build your community and maybe even make money in the process!
Tags: best wordpress plugins, blog plugins, free wordpress plugins, wordpress plugins