Blogging Tips + WordPress Plugins

Starting today I’m attending a 3-day blogging conference – MOM 2.0 Summit at the Phoenician. My friend Crystal (we met while working with Sony and TGIFridays) is with me and convinced me to go (it’s not just for mom’s trust me, first thing I asked). I also found out a few other bloggers I’ve worked with will be at the event too so I’m really excited!  If you’re attending, let me know, I would love to meet up.

Chances are you might have a blog of your own personally or for business.  If so, I wanted to share a few tips I have learned along the way that have helped with my blogging.

Editorial Calendar

In WordPress, I use the “Editorial Calendar” plugin which helps me see my drafts, pending posts and scheduled posts in a calendar format.  This helps me since I try to stay with a weekly post theme. You can click and drag your posts to move them around the calendar and you can see the time it’s scheduled to post.

Comment Reply

If you’ve left me a comment and I have responded (which I do to all comments left), you’ve probably received an email notifying you. I use the “Comment Reply Notification” WordPress plugin.

As with many plugins there are several types but this one seems to work well for me.

If you don’t have one, your reader won’t know you replied unless they return to the post to check on their own.

PDF Printer

You can use a recipe PDF if you often post recipes but the posts I’d like to turn to PDFs include sewing! See this post as an example.

I use the “WP Post to PDF Enhanced” plugin. This helps if you post something you might thing a reader would want to print and make it cleaner and easier for them to read.

Automatically sell ad space

This is not a plug in, but I pay for PassionFruit which is a marketplace where brands and other blogs can buy or swap ad space. You can pay $3 or $9 per month and list or sell a certain amount of spots. You can see my marketplace here to see a sample. They don’t take any commission from your sales (but it’s been changing from taking it to not, to fees, so I’d check their latest packages).

You will need to know light HTML coding to add the codes to a widget for your sidebar.

How to add a plugin

If you are unsure how to add a plugin, go to the “add new” and type in a search.  You download the plug in, activate it and you can go through settings to customize.

Have you found any plugins that have helped with your blogging? Any tips or things you’ve learned? Let’s share and help one another.

Blogging Community

On a related side note, are there any of you who blog where comments or post shares matter to you?

I’m talking beyond having a business blog because it’s for your business. I’m looking for fellow bloggers who blog nearly every day, or at least 2-3 times a week, work with brands (or want to) and want and need comments, shares, likes and a support group for it. If that’s you, please shoot me an email and let’s chat.

{Photo by Melissa Schollaert, makeup by Lizzy Marsh}