Instigator Blog

One of the advantages of using WordPress is the vast assortment of plugins available. You want to do something with your blog…there’s a plugin. If there isn’t, someone’s working on it.

It’s easy to get carried away with setting up plugins, and truth be told there aren’t many that are absolutely critical for most blogs. Some, are essential. And here they are:

1. Akismet - Set this up before you do anything else with plugins. It will eat almost all the spam that comes through in comments and trackbacks. And trust me, spam abounds. I installed Akismet on Where Is Basil after the spam trackbacks started trickling in. About a month later, it’s taken care of 1,610 spam comments and trackbacks. And Where Is Basil isn’t an uber-popular blog either…so spam hits everyone.
2. SimpleTags - I only discovered this recently. The most popular “tagging” plugin is Ultimate Tag Warrior which is a beast of a plugin; lots of functionality but also somewhat complex for the average user. SimpleTags is ultra-easy to use and gives you the key benefit of having Technorati tags on your posts.
3. Google Sitemaps - SEO. SEO. SEO. Or: Search Engine Optimization. SEO is an important facet of generating traffic to your blog; it helps more people find it through organic searches (i.e. through typing keywords into a search engine.) A sitemap is one part of SEO. This plugin is easy to setup and instantly creates a sitemap (and updates automatically over time). You still should submit the sitemap to Google through Google Webmaster Tools though.
4. Related Posts - Maybe this isn’t essential, but it’s still pretty slick. It’s a simple way of showing “related blog posts” at the bottom of each post. The plugin uses some fuzzy logic to decide what the post is about and displays a list of similar ones. It’s a great way to extend the shelf life of a blog post, keeping people on your blog longer and improving SEO.

In my mind, those are the essential WordPress plugins. With those you’ve tackled the basics of spam management, tagging, SEO and good blog architecture.

Of course, there are others. Here are some of the others I use:

1. Subscribe To Comments - When people comment on a blog post it’s nice to give them a way of tracking further discussion. This plugin lets people subscribe to comments, so they’ll receive an email when future comments are made. It’s borderline essential, but not quite there. With the advent and popularity of coComment (which allows you to track/subscribe to the comment threads on posts), the value of this plugin may be diminishing somewhat. Still, it’s ultra-easy to setup and can’t hurt.
2. wp-notable - This plugin puts the social bookmarking icons at the bottom of each post, so people can submit a post to digg, del.icio.us, reddit and others.
   

   Bonus Traffic Generating Tip: Although there’s plenty of debate over the value of social bookmarking sites, the one that’s worked the best for me is reddit. The problem with the traffic often generated by social bookmarking sites is that it doesn’t last. You might get a huge spike; after a couple days, you’re back to where you were. Still, it’s worth experimenting with, and reddit is the way to go, particularly if your blog isn’t uber-tech focused.

3. Google Analytics - This plugin makes sure that your WordPress blog will be tracked by Google Analytics, which is a very powerful site traffic tracking tool. I consider it essential if you’re using Google Analytics, otherwise it’s not.
4. Adsense Deluxe - This plugin is handy if you’re using Google ads on your blog. Most of us do, so it can be useful. The key thing you can do is put ads directly inside posts with a simple snippet of code. It does much more than that, but for that alone it can be worthwhile.

There are plenty of sources of information about plugins. I encourage you to check ‘em out, experiment and see what works for you!

* Must-have WordPress plugins

* The Top Ten WordPress Plugins

What plugins do you use and which ones are essential?

No one reads help manuals anymore…do they?

Help manuals are notorious for being poorly written. Have you ever tried to build an IKEA shelving unit? And that even comes with pictures!

Most manuals for software (which is the industry I work in most of the time) are insanely complex, technical and dry. I’ll admit to even writing some complex, technical and dry material. Part of you wants to be dry so you can get the information out in as clear a form as possible; but dry doesn’t necessarily equate to simple. So we loop around and around and get nowhere and accomplish very little except for 5,000 pages and too many cut-down trees.

Kathy Sierra posits that we should have marketing departments write help/user manuals.

It sounds nice on paper, but I could see the result being a mish mash of “ra ra ra, we’re the greatest!” and “technical mumbo jumbo” hacked to pieces by people that don’t understand it. I do like the idea of making help manuals more attractive, but I’m not sure marketers are the right people for designing the information in the format that’s needed. Still, it’s worth a try if you decide to keep your help manual in the first place.

But they’re obsolete remember?

So let’s look at what we can replace the old help manual with. It’s really a combination of figuring out how people learn, getting them information more easily / faster, and inciting people to want to learn.

1. Contextual Help. We’ll stick with words to start (there are plenty of people who prefer and enjoy learning via reading), but instead of dumping a giant manual on someone’s desk, why not provide contextual help within your software application / product? And for those of you that are immediately thinking about Clippy, Microsoft’s oft-hated “Office Assistant” please take a deep breath.Contextual help could be as simple as providing people a link to a help file specific to whatever section they’re in on your product. Or perhaps they mouse-over something, right-click, and select a “help option.”

   Contextual help is about finding ways to give people less information. Of course, Clippy was insanely annoying (don’t forcibly pop anything up!) and Microsoft has killed him.

2. Video Learning. Most of us are visual creatures. Given the choice between reading 10,000 lines of help manual or watching an instructional video, I’ll take the video. Creating video help files is fairly easy, although it does require some planning, and good execution. All you need is a screen recording application like Camtasia and a microphone and you’re all set. I’ve worked on a couple video learning projects and more often than not they’re extremely well received. There’s a certain “wow” effect to watching a video. And you’ll never wow anyone with a help manual.On this front, I do agree with Kathy:
   

   If the best way to help create passionate users is by helping users learn and get better, then we should put our power to entice, motivate, and inspire someone to buy more, and use it to entice, motivate, and inspire someone to learn more. In the end, those passionate users will evangelize our product or service far more credibly and honestly than we can.

   Video learning is a great way of doing that.

3. User Communities. Now more than ever, software companies (and others) promote and manage user communities online. Lots of people would prefer to get answers from their peers than from the company in question; and most people think that their peers will be more responsive (and they’re usually right!) Building up a user community is a great way of promoting on-the-fly help, but also promoting people to create their own materials that they offer others through blogs, documentation, etc. Companies should of course interact within the communities they create, and offer the necessary guidance, management and support for those communities to flourish.

   User communities can include forums, blogs, chats, wikis, etc.

If you’re adamant that you’re going to have a help manual then please, at least put it online. Make it searchable, tag the entries and set it up like its own mini-site (or mini-blog!) Put some actual thought and effort into it (this where help manuals fail most of the time; they’re an afterthought!), and maintain it.

For many of us, the help manual is something that gets shoved in a desk drawer or used as a paper weight. At best, we might recycle it, at worst it gets thrown in the garbage. The help manual is obsolete because there are better ways of doing it; more interesting, engaging and valuable ways to help people.

[tags]Kathy Sierra, passionate users, creating passionate users, customer service, camtasia, help manuals, user manuals, online help, user communities, forums[/tags]

Ikea photo by Julian Bleecker

There’s absolutely no reason to exclude contact information from your blog.

It just doesn’t make any sense. Yet…it’s rampant throughout the blogosphere. I recently participated in the BlogDay festivities by seeking out 5 blogs I had never visited before, linking to them and emailing their owners to let them know.

I was amazed at how many blogs I found that were interesting, worthwhile and that I wanted to promote…but couldn’t. No contact information.

Allowing comments on your blog isn’t good enough.

There are people out there that will want to communicate with you. Provide opportunities. Commend you. Thank you. Offer you free stuff. Help you. But they can’t if you don’t let them.

Are you worried about spam?

There’s lots of ways around that. Just write out your email address like this: byosko [at] gmail [dot] com.

Or, put a form on your blog. With WordPress there are a number of plugins for doing it. I’ved used Dagon Design’s Form Mailer, which works just fine.

Even if you’re blogging anonymously (and there are legitimate reasons for doing so), you can get a free email address from any number of sources (I’d recommend Gmail, and remain anonymous while still being able to communicate with people.

Blogging is about putting yourself out there (like being an entrepreneur!) and you can’t really do that and build a community and dialogue with people if they can’t reach out in return.

Please. I’m begging you. Give me your contact information. And don’t bury it at the bottom of the site or deep in some “About” page. Put it somewhere obvious and prominent. I want to contact you.

The latest podcast episode of The Great Big Small Business Show is all about customer service.

It’s one thing I’m passionate about. It’s something I’ve always focused on in building my businesses, and I’ve written about it in the past as well. Even when clients leave you, think about providing great customer service.

In the meantime, there’s some great bits in the 4th episode of The Great Big Small Business Show about customer service from Heidi Miller, Colleen Wainright (new contributor!) and Chris Brogan.

Yours truly is in the podcast as well, talking about cultivating customer loyalty through great customer service.

I hope you enjoy the episode and please, please, please provide us with your feedback! You can comment here, or at The Great Big Small Business Show blog or email us at any time.

[tags]great big small business show, small business, customer service, gbsbs, heidi miller, colleen wainright, chris brogan, customer support[/tags]

This blog uses WordPress, which I think is a very good blogging platform. It’s not perfect, but it’s good.

Where Is Basil? also uses WordPress, and I’ve worked on a few other projects with it, so I’ve gained some experience.

Here are some tips that might help you if you’re starting out or thinking of switching to WordPress:

1. Find a Good Theme. This is tricky because there are hundreds of them.
   Find the best theme for you with a few suggestions. And dig into Lorelle on WordPress thoroughly.
2. Edit Your Theme Carefully. Make changes slowly and carefully as you modify the look and style of your theme and ultimately your blog. We’ve all heard the advice, “Save often” when talking about Word files and the such…the same applies here. Don’t make 20 changes, then save and test. If something is broken, it becomes much harder to figure out.
3. Create a List of Categories. Categories are a great way of organizing content, and many WordPress themes will list these in the sidebar. After you’ve created a list (and I’d recommend sticking with between 5-10), change the “Default post category” under Options->Writing. This way your #1 category (or at least one category!) will be pre-selected each time you write a post.
4. Use Plugins Judiciously. Plugins are one of WordPress’s best features. There are tons of them. Plugins can be tricky because (a) you can go overboard tossing ‘em in and (b) they can interfere with each other. When one plugin causes another to break it can be difficult to troubleshoot and figure it out. Use the ones that make the most sense for you.
5. Change the Permalink Options. Go to Options->Permalinks. At minimum, I would recommend selecting the “date and name based” option (for search engine optimization or SEO), but you can also create a custom permalink structure that might be even better for SEO.
6. Change the Size of the Post Box. This might seem minor, but I find when writing a new post that the box you’re writing in is too short. Go to Options->Writing and set the “size of the post box” to something else (I use 20 lines.)

Bonus Tip: This comes from Stephen Spencer over at Business Blog Consulting:

Archive Effectively — Rand highlights a tough balancing act: “For search traffic (particularly long tail terms), it can be best to offer the full content of every post in a category on the archive pages, but from a usability standpoint, just linking to each post is far better (possibly with a very short snippet).” I find the “Optional Excerpt” in WordPress to be invaluable for achieving this balance. The Optional Excerpt is one of the fields in the Write Post form that most bloggers ignore, but if you use it, you can code your non-permalink pages (like your category pages) to display the excerpt instead of the full post or instead of the paragraphs proceeding a “more” tag in your post copy…That gives you more flexibility to summarize and highlight particular sections or keywords from the full post.

Lorelle is all over excerpts, explaining them in great detail.

With the tips provided you should be able to get a very good WordPress blog up and running with minimal effort. Of course, if you want to radically modify a theme, do anything very specific, experiment with more complex plugins, etc. things will be trickier, take longer and require more expertise. But the basics are there…