This guest post is by Marci Reynolds of marcireynolds.com.
The July 2011 WordPress wordcamp Boston rocked! Hundreds of excited WordPress users gathered to look at more than 40 speakers who presented on topics of social media to themes shortcodes for safety.
I took detailed comments as I listened, watched and network with blogging and WordPress geniuses and have collected what I consider the most interesting tips and tricks.
Plugins were a hot topic in each session, but only three rose to the top as the "recommended":
yoast seo: can you optimize page titles, meta descriptions, keywords, sitemaps XMLhubspot plugin: you can leverage HubSpot lead nurturing, website analytics and "call to action" message typesGoogle Analytics for WordPress: you can synchronize information with your Google analytics account and you can custom variables and meta-data tracking.In addition to the hearing on the importance of fresh, high quality content ("content, content, content") strengthened a number of experts this WordPress SEO tips:
Change the default Permalink to blog posts to end up with the name of your post, not the number of the post.Use images to your content, engage readers break down and help with SEO. Make sure you have the image themselves, or they choose in "creative commons", with appropriate credit (one of my favorites is http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/).Use relevant keywords in the image name and alternative textAdd a XML sitemap.Measuring and improving your site loading speed. Google's Matt Cutts has stated that, "We want the web to be faster, we want sites to load fast," so it is quite possible that Google would want to encourage and reward this via their ranking of sites.Google added in May 2011, a Report of the speed of the Site in Google Analytics.For more detailed info, check out the recent blog post on Search Engine Watch, Why marketers should care about Site speed.Build link juice. Not random back links, but high quality links to and from other sites that provide relevant content. (A technique that worked well on my Blog sales operations, is to build a page dedicated to links to other sites with relevant, high quality content. For example, consider this other sales Ops articles . )I think it is necessary that each 2011 Conference, whether it's about real estate, insurance, or cat food, should include multiple sessions on the use of social media, and WordCamp (WC) part of that group.
However, there was a clear division of labour in the toilet-audience. Some participants TOILET like me, were well versed in the social media 101 and 102 and were looking for something new and advanced. The remaining participants (50% of humans seemed) were beginners and were looking for advice on how to get started. An attendee of the Conference was skewered on Twitter, hashtag # wcbos, to ask how to spell "Mashable". Understandable!
The general themes about how to use social media to support the efforts of your WordPress were:
Make it easy for readers to share your blog content by including parts of buttons in your posts. There are many options of the plugin to facilitate that.Use social media to share your content. You should only share with 50 or 100 followers, but you need to consider the power of the retweet. Per HubSpot have blog posts that are shared on Twitter more page views, while blog messages shared on Facebook more comments.Try to test three headlines on Twitter and see what gets the most click-throughs.Overall, WordCamp Boston was a great experience, and worth the time and money investments. I saw some very talented speakers, network with other WordPress users and learned many new things. I look forward to attending next year.
Have you participated in an event WordCamp? What have you learned?
Marci Reynolds, based in Boston, MA, is a leader operations per day and an active blogger outside office hours.
She loves writing about social media best practices, sales support, service operations and process improvement. More information about Marci.
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