You may think your blog post titles don’t really matter, but the thing is - they do matter a lot.
How does a random person decide whether to read a blog post or not? It doesn’t matter if the named person found your blog post at the searcher or at his feed, or at any of the social bookmarking websites, or even by simply surfing the web, the first thing the decision whether to read a post or not depends on is the title. Thus the title should be really great, catching and intriguing. There are loads of information at the Net on how to make your post titles prominent and catching, I collected the most reasonable tips to give you a simple yet useful check list. Note that not every of these tips is good for every blog post you write, everything depends on content, thus remember that you blog post title should reveal what your blog post is about, everything else comes later.
* Use keywords
* Hint what your reader will “get” from reading your post.
* Debates and controversy are the powerful tool for attracting readers.
* Use words like ‘free’, ‘discover’, ’stunning’, ‘warning’, ‘easy’, ’secrets’ and other power words.
* Promise something. But don’t forget to back the promises up at the post.
* Reach out to your reader. Using “you” in the title as well as in the post itself makes it more personal, thus more vivid for readers.
* Ask questions. These are good not only in attracting readers but also in stimulating comments.
* Be humorous. Humor is a great tool, but it has to be funny, remember that.
* Always right for your readers, not the search engines first.
* Simplicity is the key. No one likes too complected words and highbrow content.
* Lists are among the most popular posts.
Well, have I missed something? Do share your tips and advice in comments below.
Posts Tagged ‘wordpress blog’
11 Tips on Making Your Post Titles Prominent
May 26th, 2009Best mp3 Plugins for Your WordPress Blog
May 15th, 2009
Remember one of my previous posts where I showed you some awesome Music WP Themes? Well, today I’m going to extend the topic of music in blogs and show you few plugins main goal of which is to give you the way to add any .mp3 files to your posts and pages. Note that if you add these plugins your weblog loading might become a little bit slower. Well, here they are:
* Tune Library
Very good plugin that imports an XML iTunes music library file into your blog database. You can display your whole music collection at your WordPress powered blog or website.
* Flash MP3 Player
This is a sidebar widget that displays your mp3 player at the sidebar of your blog. The playlist is customized at your Admin panel.
* Zina
A graphical interface to the mp3 collection of yours.
* fmTuner
This nice plugin pulls the info from your Last.fm account. Your top tracks, recent tracks and loved tracks can be ordered and displayed the way you want. Just use the easy to operate built-in options and tags.
* Streampad Audio Player
All the mp3 files you link to from your WordPress blog are displayed in the audio player at the bottom of your web page.
* Audio Player Wordpress plugin
This small plugin allows you to add mp3 files to your posts and pages. Very good tool for a podcasting blog.
These were only the few of hundreds of music plugins you can find, if you know more and would like to recommend feel free to do so at the comments below.
Twitter tools for WordPress
April 28th, 2009
Twitter seems to become a must have for every blogger nowadays. Not only it is a popular social network but also a very good promotion tool. So, here are some useful twitter tools for WordPress for you.
WordTwit
This WordPress Plugin utilizes Twitter’s API to automatically push your newly published post to your Twitter account as a tweet. This plugin also converts the links into tiny URLs. It’s a good additional way to let your readers know you’ve got a new post published.
The Twitter Updater
WordPress plugin that sends a Twitter status update to your Twitter account automatically when you publish or edit a post. You can specify the text of the update and turn it off/on.
WP Twitip ID
This little plugin adds a field to your comment form for your commentators to put their twitter username
Twitter Tools
The plugin integrates your blog with your Twitter account. This nice plugin allows you to pull tweets into your blog and create new tweets on your blog posts.
Twitt-Twoo
This simple plugin gives you an opportunity to update your Twittr status right from your WordPress blog sidebar. The quick and easy status updates even do not require a page reload.
Twitter Feed
Another plugin that posts your weblog updates to your Twitter account.
TweetBacks
Very popular plugin that displays what people are saying about your blog posts on Twitter.
TickTweet
This small plugin allows you to show tweets that contain some particular keyword.
Twitturls
Displays the most popular tweets.
Commentwitter
Allows to send your comments as tweets.
What are the Twitter tools you use at your WordPress blogs?
Create an online store out of your WordPress blog
April 14th, 2009
The majority of WordPress bloggers make money with paid advertising and affiliate programs, but there are some other ways to make money online, one of them is to actually sell things online. What do you need to make your WordPress powered blog an online store? Well, basically, all you need is a shopping cart.
There are some options available for you:
* WP e-Commerce Plugin
This application is the most complete, powerful, elegant and easy to use Shopping Plugin for WordPress.
* Quick Shop Plugin
This nice plugin adds a SideBar widget allowing the users to see what they currently have in the cart and gives them an opportunity to remove the items. The TinyMCE button is one of the greatest features of the Quick Shop Plugin, it allows you to easily add products to your blog posts and pages.
* eShop plugin
This powerful WordPress plugin has many great features. It allows to list multiple products, with add to cart form, on a single page and to use Wordpress pages or posts to create products, 3 methods for calculating shipping charges are available, products can have multiple options. These are only few of the features available.
* WP Live-Shopping plugin
The widget gives you the ability to display all live shopping offers at your blog in one single widget. The widget can be added to your sidebar and customized to look as you wish it to look like.
* WP Auctions plugin
This great plugin gives you an opportunity to host auctions on your blog and to sell anything you want to fee-free. There are many features: you can create and host as many auctions as you wish, upload multiple images for each auction, sell everything only on ‘Buy It Now’ basis, get payment via PayPal and many more.
* ArtPal plugin
This free WordPress plugin was originally created for artists to give them an opportunity to sell their art works online. The plugin simply integrates the PayPal with a Wordpress blog.
Have you tried any of these plugins and what was your experience?
Plugins to back up your WordPress blog.
March 26th, 2009
We put a lot of our time and effort in our blogs, if you’ve been running one for a while you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Your blog becomes your primer interest, your biggest passion and the first thing you think about in the morning. And loosing even one single letter from your work becomes really painful. That’s why the theme of my today’s post should be of the greatest interest for you. Backing up your WordPress powered blog.
Well, there actually are few WordPress plugins to help you do the task.
Wordpress Database Backup
Simple plugin that allows you to schedule automatic daily, weekly or monthly database backups, which can be emailed to you or added to your FTP. There is a drawback of this plugin - it doesn’t give you a simple way to restore your database from the backup.
WP-DB Manager
This plugin gives you a comfortable database management right from your admin panel. Being more complicated than Wordpress Database Backup WP-DB Manager has more features, ‘restore from backup’ feature is among them.
As you see, these two plugins provide back up only for your database. But what about everything else: your precious themes, plugins, images?
Well, there is the WordPress Backup plugin that manages all these valuable elements of your blog and emails the back ups to you.
All mentioned plugins nicely work together and I suggest using them all for more safety.
Are there any other tools you use to back up you blogs?
