Austin WordPress Meetup

Bringing together WordPress users of all levels

Content Development and Management

Structuring and Developing a Winning Content Strategy

Content Development and Management, Meetup Meeting Notes, WordPress Beginners

Many of our WordPress Beginners have asked for a dedicated session to address the best approach to developing a winning content strategy. Nick and Sandi Batik led this month’s discussion. They reviewed a few tools to help you get the most from your pages and posts. Nick demonstrated some navigation tips and an internal linking structure to help build effective information architecture. The session concluded with  5-step system to write copy that consistently attracts your target clients and organically build SEO.

Here is the link to the slide deck:

 

Deep Dive Discussion — Effective Web Content Creation and Management

Content Development and Management

This entry is part [part not set] of 9 in the series Meetup Meeting Notes

This month’s Deep-Dive Discussion, lead by H. Sandra Chevalier-Batik, focused on the tools and processes available to help you develop and implement an effective web content creation and management strategy for your WordPress site. Our discussion focused on the problem all site owners and managers face after developing a great looking website — “feed the beast” syndrome. We talked about how to produce steady streams of content that engages their site visitors and site owners them build their “On-Line Tribe.”

You can access the side deck at:

http://presentations.handsonwp.com/category/deep-dive-discussion-effective-content/

Problems we addressed included, how often should we update the content on our site’s ‘static’ pages; what can we do to add some dynamic content to our static pages to keep the search spiders coming back; content audits, why do we need one, and how to do it? Sandi discussed both offline and online tools and resources to help brainstorm topics for your site’s blog, produce the kind of content that will engage and build your on-line community, and ways to use that content to your build your Tribe of followers. We addressed the styles of written content that are most effective, mobile-friendly, formats, and discussed the increasing importance of photos, video and MP3 content.

For additional notes you can check out a previous blog Sandi posted addressing Best Practices for Content Development and Management at: http://handsonwp.com/knowledge-base/best-practices-effective-content-creation/

Effective Content Creation: Austin WordPress 09.15.14 Meet-up Notes

Content Development and Management, WordPress Beginners

This entry is part [part not set] of 3 in the series WordPress For Beginners

Best Practices for Effective Content Creation

This WordPress for Beginners presentation focused on the tools and processes available to help those new to WordPress develop and implement a winning content creation strategy. After making all the hard choices to design and develop a great looking website every website owner faces the same problem — the “feed the beast” syndrome. How do we continually produce steady stream of engaging content for our WordPress site? How often should we update the content on our site’s ‘static’ pages? What can we do to add some dynamic content to our static pages to keep the Search-Bots coming back?

AustinWordPress Meetup Content Creation and Curation Nick and Sandi Batik discussed and demonstrated both offline and online tools and resources to use for brainstorming Blog topics, producing relevant content that targets the site’s audience, and ways to use that content to build an on-line community. The class discussed the correct use of categories in content organization, and the styles of written content that are most effective. Sandi introduced the topic of curating content and discussed the tools needed to conduct a content audit.

The link to the 09.15.14 WP Meet-up Best Practices for Effective Content Creation slide deck is:
http://presentations.handsonwp.com/category/09-15-14-wp-meetup-best-practices-for-effective-content-creation/

As promised I’ve included the links  to the resources, plugins, process tools and apps we discussed during the meetup. All the links can be found at: http://handsonwp.com/knowledge-base/best-practices-effective-content-creation/

The goal if this session was to give beginners a starting place. As you continue to research  your site’s content strategy — question your assumptions, and refine your website’s objectives.

 If you have a good reason, consciously change your content creation plan.

Don’t drift into decisions.

Make changes based on facts — keep close watch on your site metrics.

Make sure that the content and the appearance of your website, are in alignment with your stated business goals and the needs of your target market.

We hope the resources and tools provided will help you get all those words and phases out of your head and organized into a site that does what you need it to do!

All of the organizers of the Austin WordPress group look forward to seeing you all at the next Austin WordPress Meet-up!

Content, Content, Content!

Content Development and Management, Meetup Meeting Notes

Our September 9th Meetup at Posh CoWorking Lounge was a Deep Dive discussion that focused on Content, Content Content.

It was an open-ended, fast moving discussion about all aspects of content development strategies and management.  Our attendees ranged from writers who produced their own site content, Content Flow Chart Blackboardto site managers and owners who had content produced in-house or contracted-out to professional writers here and abroad. We concluded that successful site owners and managers have a clearly defined content plan, based on keywords, identified through on-going research. Several attendees brought up points from Tony Tovar’s August SEO Presentation: how content drives a successful link campaigns, that site content has to accurately address customer queries, and provide a clear call to action. Content controlled why customers came to the site and it can be why customers quickly bounce of the site.

As promised here are some of the links we discussed during the meeting. Here’s hoping the steps provided will help you get all those words and phases out of your head and organized into a site that does what you need it to do.

Developing a Content Strategy

 Content, Content, Content — Continued!

Here are the links for the various plugins and services we discussed during the meeting

The Organize Series WordPress Plugin helps with the organization and presentation of articles/posts you write as part of a series. It helps make it easier for readers of your blog to discover all the series you’ve written and also to easily find post that are part of the same series. http://wordpress.org/plugins/organize-series/

 Yoast SEO Optimize your WordPress site with just one plugin
The most complete SEO plugin for WordPress available today offers you everything you need to optimize your site. http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/

ShopTalk  is a podcast about front end web design, development and UX. Each week Dave & Chris will be joined by a special guest who is there to talk shop and help answer listener submitted questions.  This is a great POD CAST model to emulate. http://shoptalkshow.com/

Editorial Calendar gives you an overview of your blog and when each post will be published. You can drag and drop to move posts, edit posts right in the calendar, and manage your entire blog. http://wordpress.org/plugins/editorial-calendar/

KeyWordSpy Realtime tracking to monitor keyword performance. http://www.keywordspy.com/

Add rel=nofollow Plugin is a wordpress plugin that inserts the HTML tag rel=nofollow on every <a> tag mentioned in the post. http://wordpress.org/plugins/add-relnofollow-to-links/

Tag: nofollow Improves your blog’s search engine optimization by “noindexing” pages you choose. Now also for page-based (as opposed to date-based) http://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/nofollow

Get the Image is a plugin that grabs images for you. It was designed to make the process of things such as adding thumbnails, feature images, and/or other images to your blog much easier, but it’s so much more than that. It is an image-based representation of your WordPress posts. http://wordpress.org/plugins/get-the-image/

Contextual Related Posts is a powerful plugin for WordPress that allows you to display a list of related posts on your website and in your feed. The list is based on the content of the title and/or content of the posts which makes them more relevant and more likely to be of interest to your readers. This allows you to retain visitors, reduce bounce rates and refresh old entries. http://wordpress.org/plugins/contextual-related-posts/

Thomas Umstattd Jr. is the CEO of Castle Media Group the parent company of Author Media. You can follow him on Twitter @ThomasUmstattd and on Google+ He loves helping people use technology to change the world. Great newsletter to model and a profession writer’s best friend. http://www.authormedia.com/author/thomas/