Successful Blogging – Where To Start
Many people have purchased web hosting and have installed WordPress. Now what? You may find yourself thinking about what to do next, and that’s not a hard thing to move forward with. As long as you look into a few ways to ensure your WordPress installation doesn’t get ignored, you’ll find success. This includes a lot of different options to consider, especially if you want to gain momentum and monetize your website. Monetization today doesn’t always mean success tomorrow, but it could definitely start with a few ideas. The following are 7 ways to ensure that your WordPress installation turns into a true success.
Lock Things Down First
First and foremost, make sure that you lock down your website. That means changing all the passwords, and making sure that you are not targeted for hacking. Use a plugin that locks things down too. If you are going to be successful with any form of WordPress publishing, you need to ensure that no one is going to try and mess with your page at all. As such, make sure that you look into this on a lot of different levels.
WordPress is a big target for hackers. Millions of website owners use WordPress and hackers target users who don’t keep WordPress up to date. Always keep your WordPress installation current. Inside the WordPress admin dashboard you’ll see a button that lets you update WordPress to the latest version automatically. You’ll also want to make sure any themes or plugins you install are updated. In the Plugins section you’ll see an ‘update now’ link beside a plugin if there is an update available. Keeping things current not only lets you take advantage of the latest features but more importantly it ensures your website files are secure from hackers.
Here are a few recommended security plugins for WordPress
WordFence protects you from brute-force login attempts and exploits in real-time. It’s a free plugin that can lock down your website and keep it secure. It provides login security, malware scanning, WordPress firewall and caching features.
Sucuri is one of the leading security firms. They are a reputable security company and provide a host of features to protect and secure your WordPress install.
Seek Out Content To Repost
One of the things that you should be doing is simple, look into various social media pages, blogs and more, and use the content that is posted as your own. No, don’t steal. You want to make sure that you cite your source, but make sure that you update your page with links, photographs, videos, and more. This is an easy way to build potential, especially after you start to work within the confines of niche content updates.
Write Posts In Advance
In order to get updates faster on your page, write them in advance. The more you focus on advance writing, the better options you will have to publish. Make sure that you focus on WordPress publishing with variety too. For instance, think about your niche and start writing out a few topics that you’d want to talk about. Talk about a few things to start, from the basics and then build towards more expert topics. Write posts in advance, upwards of 30 to 100 in advance and you’ll have a lot of posts to run through. Remember, successful WordPress blogs aren’t about limited postings, it’s about prolific writing.
A great plugin for scheduling posts is WP ScheduledPost. You can choose the date and time you want your auto-post to run and it has a ton of other custom settings you can play around with.
Hire A Writer
Let’s assume that you can’t really update your page. You’re a busy person and you’re not really sure what to even write about. If you find yourself trying to figure out what to do, then you’ll want to look into hiring a ghost writer that specializes in blogging. If you want to take things a step further, make sure that you look into WordPress publishing specialists. That will guarantee that your page doesn’t get neglected, and you are able to get a lot of updates going.
One of the most popular sites to find a blogger is ProBlogger.
Auto-Posters and Cron Jobs
Here’s an interesting option for those that want to install WordPress and don’t want to write or publish posts themselves. Instead of going this route, look into automatic posting options. Automatic posters are fascinating but they require you to get an API to run posts through either RSS updates or drafts. This is a tough thing to work with sometimes, and if you’re not intimately knowledgeable about RSS, API, Cron Jobs, and Database driven elements, you’ll lose out big time. Auto-Posters are good, but you have to be careful about “duplicate” posts. Duplicate postings are going to cause SEO problems. If you’re going to be successful with this, you’ll need to figure out an outside traffic resource, because your SEO may suffer as a result of this constant updating. It’s just something to think about overall.
Just Don’t Give Up
Perhaps the best tip that you can take with you right now is simple, don’t give up. Don’t just throw in the towel on you WordPress update. You want to make sure that you continue to post, even if it’s not that much. You’ll want to create 250 – 300 word updates here and there, and talk about things that you love. The more you do that, the higher the chances are that you’re going to end up with a positive movement forward. People that throw in the towel too early will end up with diminished results overall. It’s easy to say this, but too often, people just don’t work on their pages after installing the content management systems. In order to gain the upper hand, make sure that you don’t give up on WordPress. Make sure that you keep this in mind.
