WordPress Visual QuickStart Guide

If you’re at all a fan of microblogging, you’ve probably seen some 140-character disasters come sailing through your stream. I’m not talking about faux-pas or inappropriate missives; my real peeve is using microblogging as a relay service for whatever content you actually do update.

Am I suggesting that you should never tweet about sales, blog posts or links to other sites? Not at all! Those are all perfectly legitimate uses of a microblog, and can be a powerful tool for bringing a new audience to your content.

The difference between an unexplained URL and a quick note (“Today I’m talking about gluten!”) followed by a link: huge. One of them is practically bound to be ignored (didn’t your mama teach you never to follow strange links?); the other lets people know at a glance where you’re sending them and why they should click.

But don’t think that you can just paste that same note and URL combo everywhere you have an online presence. Remember, some of your fans may follow you in multiple places. If all you’re doing is regurgitating the same tired message, all you’re really saying to your fans is that there’s no point in paying attention to more than one of your feeds. That can be a real problem if you ever do decide to run specials or connect with your followers in a meaningful way – once they’re gone, it’s unlikely they’ll be back.

By Jessica Neuman Beck June 26th, 2011 See more in: Blogging

Stats can be a great way to keep tabs on how much traffic your site it getting, but remember to take them with a grain of salt.

Different tracking programs register hits in different ways. For example, WordPress.com stats (like the ones I have on this very site) will very helpfully tell you that they don’t count your own visits to your site in your total daily views…but if you’re checking your site from a different browser (or a different device, like your iPad) then all those obsessive clicks to see if your comment count has updated will cause your view count to soar to the stratosphere.

Some stats programs can be configured to ignore all views from your IP address, which can take care of the multiple browsers/devices problem…but if you take a look at some of your site visitors you may notice things called bots or spiders. Those are search engines crawling your site, and they are extremely unlikely to comment to tell you how brilliant you are. Being largely composed of algorithms, bots and spiders just want to make sure your content is relevant.

By Jessica Neuman Beck June 26th, 2011 See more in: WordPress

Our book’s release date is right around the corner – in fact, we just got our advance copies in the mail today! Check it out:

By Jessica Neuman Beck November 11th, 2009 See more in: VQS · WordPress