I’m not a big proponent of meetings.  In a few cases I think they can help brainstorm good ideas, make decisions quickly, and make big changes decisively.  But, for the most part I think the time could be spent better (either doing more productive work or enjoying relationships with those we love).

One big reason I think people like to have meetings is so that they can process their ideas outloud.  But, why take up someone else’s time while you process something?  Instead I like to use email or comments on my project management system, Basecamp to get feedback.  And I don’t think I’m being a jerk about it.  My reasoning is that using these tools forces you to write out your thoughts.  And I believe you don’t have a firm grasp on your thoughts until you are able to write them out.

Writing out your thoughts and opinions on something compels you to really assess what’s going on in your head.  Until someone else can understand it, there’s a good chance you don’t understand it either.  You see my point?  I’ve had the idea for this blog post for months now, but it just stays a floating mess of thoughts until I capture it and put it down in words.  Then I’ve constrained my thoughts into something concrete that can be understood and assessed by others.

Writing it out goes for more than just getting your opinions and thoughts out.  It also works for showing you can synthesize information into knowledge.  It’s why we all had to write book reports in school instead of just telling the teacher we read the book.  It’s one reason why writing a blog can help show that you are an expert in your field.  Putting your knowledge down for everyone else to read proves you’re not just a smooth talker.  You’re going on record to show you know what you’re talking about, and it can be proven.

So, make sure you know what you’re thinking and prove it to others – write it out.

Or, read one of these:

1. Write on the River Poster
2. Write on the River Website
3. Write on the River

A few days before the conference I had tweeted some of the most helpful and influential people who tweet about blogging and social media for writers.  My basic question to all of them was this, “I’m giving a workshop for writers about blogging and social media – could you give your 140 char. of advice about them?”  I received replies from everyone I tweeted, and all within 24 hours.

Thus one of the most powerful aspects of social media is displayed.  When else in the history could I get on such easy, instant, direct contact with someone who gets the respect and following of tens of thousands of people?

So without further ado, here is advice from the pros: How Writers Should Use Blogging and Social Media:

Ronnie Smith

Ronnie runs writersrelief.com, a great website with lots of tips, hints, and hot leads for submitting and publishing your books, poems, and stories.
@WritersRelief >10,000 followers

Advice? Proofread. Be consistent. Smile. :-) Sounds like a great workshop.

Dana Lynn Smith

Book marketing coach and author of The Savvy Book Marketer Guides at www.SavvyBookMarketer.com.
@bookmarketer > 3,000 followers

Blogging: Combine author blog & website; plan on paper first; keyword optimize; blog 3x/week http://bit.ly/BloggingResources

Social Media: Choose right networks; build effective profile; budget time; write effective updates http://bit.ly/SocialResources

Joanna Penn

Is the author of thecreativepenn.com, offering TONS of advice on writing, blogging, social media and how to get published. Tweets lots of links to great content for writers across the web.
@thecreativepenn >12,000 followers

get a distinctive blog, add great content regularly, be useful, use multimedia, stay in niche, focus hard on 1 social network

Alexandra Levit

Business/workplace author and speaker with 5 pubbed books and 2 syndicated columns. Featured in New York Times, USA Today, National Public Radio, ABC News, Fox News, CNBC, the Associated Press, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and Fortune.
@alevit > 34,000 followers

Set aside an hour a day for blogging and social media.  Otherwise they will eat up time surreptitiously.

Leo Babauta

Started ZenHabits.net, one of the best blogs ever (in my opinion) and WriteToDone.com, a blog to help writers improve their craft and their art. He’s a true poster-child for noname-to-stardom blogging. With his great content he got over 100,000 readers of his blog in less than 2 years. He’s also published multiple books from his blog.
@zen_habits > 42,000 followers

Writing advice: Say less, choose carefully, clear distractions. And it’s all distractions, if it’s not writing.

Have more advice for writers using blogging and social media? Give it below in the comments and be sure to leave your social media links.

Or, read one of these:

1. Blogs and Social Media: What Every Writer Should Know
2. The Power of a Personal Voice
3. 4 Ways to get More Traffic to Your Blog

What makes WordPress even better is the great variety of high-quality plugins that add all sorts of increased functionality to your website.  WordPress.org hosts a great database of thousands of plugins you can install with one click on your own site.  Most plugins are created for free by awesome coders helping make the world a better place.  They deserve serious thanks.  (So if you are a coder who has created a free WordPress plugin – THANKS!)

In my use of WordPress to create websites that connect my clients and their markets I’ve come across a few that are indispensable.  These plugins can be added to your site whether you are a professional developer or hobby blogger.  These plugins stand out to me because they:

• Are easy to add to the site
• Have customizable options
• Integrate seamlessly with the WP admin panel
• Are easy to add custom design to
• Are easy for clients to understand and use (when needed)

(see this article about what makes a good plugin in general)

So, while not an exhaustive list, here are some of my favorite plugins:

Akismet

Somehow the evil spam robots of the universe have even figured out how to leave spam comments on blogs.  This can get annoying if you are constantly being bombarded with comments that aren’t real.  Akismet is the fastest way to shut off the spam-flow.  After installation I’ve never seen a spam comment get into the system.  Nice!

Google Analytics

Okay, I honestly don’t use a plugin to add Google Analytics to my sites, I do it by adding code by hand.  The point is that you need Google Analytics on your site no matter how you get it there.  Analytics gives you an incredible amount of information about visitors to your site – where in the galaxy world they came from, what they were looking for, what they looked at while on your site, and much, much more.  If you aren’t getting in-depth reports on your website traffic you need to reconsider what you are even doing with your website.

Google XML Sitemaps

One key to ranking well in search engines is to make your website easy for them to crawl and index.  This plugin creates a sitemap for search engines to see what content you have on your site, then submits it to the search engines for you! How much easier can that get?

WP sIFR

The bane of website typography for designers is the fact that we’re limited to using a very small number of fonts for editable text.  sIFR is a solution that uses Flash-based fonts to dynamically replace certain text.  This increases the number of fonts you can use like, a hundred-fold.  Looks way better and stays indexable by search engines.  This plugin makes the process of adding this great functionality to your site painless.

Lightbox 2

Images opening in their own lightbox window on top of the current page is way cooler than them opening on their own blank page.  Now adding this feature is a three step process: add the Lightbox 2 plugin, add your images, tell them to open (individually or as a group) with Lightbox.

Sociable

One of the best ways to spread the word about your blog or website is to let other people do it for you.  Sociable automatically includes a widget at the bottom of your chosen posts and pages for people to share your site via social media.  You can choose from over 99 different media sites – add as many or as few as you’d like and make sharing easy on your readers.

Twitter for WP

Everyone from movie stars to soccer moms is using Twitter these days, and if you’re using it it should be included on your site.  Some Twitter widgets and plugins are big bulky things that look ugly and take up too much space.  Enter Twitter for WP – super clean, simple and small.  You can easily style your tweets to match the rest of your site and then everyone can know what you are doing!

WP List Cal

Lots of people want calendars on their site to list upcoming events, shows, or sales.  However, it can be frustrating for users to see a big blank monthly calendar staring them in the face, where they then must click on each day to see what’s happening.  WP List Cal just displays a beautiful list of your upcoming events, and adding new events is as easy as pie.  Which I think means its really easy.

WP Polls

Adding polls to your site is a great way to get visitors to start interacting with your site – and to find out what they think!  WP Polls makes adding polls to your site a snap. You can insert the polls into your blog posts, onto pages, or have the newest ones show up in the sidebar.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Keep visitors on your site longer by referring them to other posts that they might enjoy.  YARPP uses an algorithm developed by Martians that displays a list of recommended similar posts to the one your visitor is currently reading.  Giving readers more of what they want, and giving you more reads – everybody wins!

So, there you go – my favorite WordPress plugins.  Are you a WordPress user?  What’s your favorite WordPress plugin?

Or, read one of these:

1. WordPress Training
2. Uploading and Linking to a PDF in WordPress 2.8
3. 18 Beautiful Websites built with WordPress

photo by Kristina B

There are considerable number of positives to business blogging.  Don’t get me wrong in this article – I think most companies should have a blog.  However, putting a blog on your site is not a quick fix; its not an automatic easy way guarantee that your traffic will boom and your website be a success.  Blogs take time, energy, and more time.  And because of this many blogs on business websites can actually hurt the business.  Few things worse looking on a professional site than a blog with one post, or a blog that hasn’t been updated in months or years.  So, take some time to think about if blogging is right for your business.  My suggestion?  Don’t start a new blog if:

You Aren’t Going to Update Consistently

Of huge importance to your blog is your consistency in posting.  I usually recommend clients try to be able to post 1 new article a week, twice a month at the least.  Even more critical though is the commitment to regular posting.  Its fine to even let your readers know how often you plan on posting to help them know when to come back for more.  Its not always easy (email me for my #1 tip on how to post consistently!), but it is important.

If you aren’t going to post consistently and just plan on updating your site with news about your business – don’t call it a blog!  Just have a Recent News section or something.

You Don’t Have Time

Image by TomStardust

As you might be starting to see, writing a blog is going to take some time.  Make sure you know that and plan for it.  If you see the potential for new business that your blog could bring you (many businesses main source of revenue stems from their blogs), plan to spend time on it just as you would other promotions.  You are planning out time for promoting your business, aren’t you?

You Don’t Know what a Blog is

This might seem silly, but many people think that by adding a blog or setting up a Twitter or Facebook account their company will automatically be inundated with orders from the internet.  Again, it has the potential for that, but it does not come easily.  If you don’t know much about blogs spend some time learning.  Read tops blogs in your industry, read blogs about your favorite hobby, read blogs by your friends.  Respond in their comment section and get involved in the site.  Spend time analyzing and seeing what works and what doesn’t in blogs.  Writing for the web is different than writing press releases or sending an email.  Expose yourself to the blogging world a bit before you dive in.

You Don’t Have a Target Audience

Promoting your business in any way begins with the knowledge of who your target market is.  Big businesses spend millions learning who will be most likely to buy their products and even more figuring out how to reach them.  You should always know who you are trying to get to in your marketing, and this is just as important with your blog (and your website in general).  The more niche a blog is, the better chance it has of standing out in an already hugely crowded market.  Also, knowing who you are writing to can really help you decide what to write about.

You Just Want to Sell Sell Sell

People don’t read blogs just to hear about how great your product or company is.  If you are expecting to draw in readers by just blogging about the latest promotion your store is running you probably have the wrong idea of what a blog is.  People read blogs to be informed of something they are interested in.  Continually tooting your own horn gets old quickly.  Make sure you are giving your readers quality content that benefits them.

You Don’t Want Feedback

The best blogs are a place for community to develop.  Authors may be the originators of the discussion, but responses comes from a huge variety of people and places.  New technologies like blogging are all about hearing from your customers and being able to engage them.  Lastly, don’t assume that all feedback on your blog will be positive (plenty of negative comments here), hearing people’s honest opinions can be tough, but its important to stay honest and transparent – something everyone can appreciate.

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Still have questions about blogging or if a blog is right for your business?  Go ahead and contact me for free consultation!

Or, read one of these:

1. 4 Ways to get More Traffic to Your Blog
2. Guest Blog Post on Creating a Healthy Work/Life Balance