Free Social Media Help for Solopreneurs | Social Media Marketing Help

How to Find the RSS Feed Link for Your Wordpress Blog

Today’s tip is all about leverage.

What if you could write one blog post and then distribute or syndicate that content automatically across Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other social networks?

The secret to this type of leverage is RSS. For the definition of RSS and what it means to you check out my earlier blog post.

Do you know what the RSS feed address of your blog/website is?

If you don’t, here’s how to find out. Don’t worry, it’s only 1 step!

Note: This advice is for those using WordPress only.

Simply take the main domain name and add ‘/feed’.

So for example: http://freesocialmediahelp.com/feed gives you the feed for this website.

If you installed wordpress on a subdomain like http://WomenWithDreams.com/blog then the feed would be http://WomenWithDreams.com/blog/feed

You know you got this right when you put that URL into Firefox and Google asks you to add the feed to your Google Reader or your Google Homepage

Now…what you can do with this:

Add to Hootsuite (this free service will automatically feed Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Plaxo and many other sites…it is the BOMB!)
Add to niche social networks (Active Rain, Savor the Success, etc)
Add to Yahoo Pipes

There will be many more uses as you start to pay attention. Consider yourself armed and dangerous!

Ugly URLs Got You Down?

By default WordPress uses web URLS which have question marks and a lot of numbers in them.

Something like this http://www.freegiftfrommande.com/?page_id=2

This type of link is very hard to pass on verbally or post anywhere you want a ‘prettier’ link.

Another problem with this type of link is that it doesn’t have any keyword juice for search engine optimization.

You can easily change your the way your web URLS look in the ‘Permalink Options’ under settings in the administration area of your self-hosted WordPress installation.

I recommend you choose the ‘custom’ option and then add /%postname%/ in the field. (Be sure to include the / before and after the %)

Now your links will look like mine here on FreeSocialMediaHelp.com.

http://www.freesocialmediahelp.com/ugly-urls-got-you-down

If you wanted to create an easy to remember URL or a page then you’d just choose something really short and sweet.

It’s best to set up Permalinks when you first set up your blog but in most cases you shouldn’t have any problems setting up Permalinks after you’ve been blogging or building out squeeze pages for long.

My #1 Mandatory, Life-Saving, Headache Reducing Wordpress Plugin

You saw in a previous post my all time MUST have WordPress plugin is Tiny MCE Advanced. WordPress Database Backup is my recommendation for the one plugin you can’t afford to not install. No it’s not sexy. It won’t get you more traffic. Most of the time you don’t even realize you need it.

But it will save you time, money and a lot of heartache should your WordPress installation get maliciously hacked (it’s happened to me 3 times in 2 years…it does happen) your web hosting company forgets to backup your files for you or any other unforseen virtual tradegies.

This plugin once installed and configured will send you an email each week with a backup of all the contents of your wordpress database. Should you ever need to use it to rebuild your site it’ll give you all you need to get your site back up in less than 15 minutes.

So stop reading now and go install this plugin right away… Hopefully you will never need it but if you ever do, you’ll thank me!

P.S. Remember you don’t have to install these plugins the manual way. I just provide the link to the plugins so that you know for sure when you search for the plugin inside WordPress you have found the right one

How to Get More Readers to 'Like Your Blog Posts

Getting readers to ‘like’ your blog posts is as simple as the click of a button with the WP-FB-Like Button Plugin for WordPress.

Now there are all kinds of other plugins for social bookmarking but I would suggest using this one in addition to those. You can check out on my blog how this looks.

With this plugin you can add the icon to your posts and pages. So for those of you who are doing what I recommend and building your squeeze pages, pink spoons and landing pages with wordpress you can add the ‘like’ button to these as well.

After you’ve added the plugin be sure to watch your Google Analytics and notice the flood of traffic that’ll be coming from Facebook.

The Difference Between Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org

WordPress is a free content management software that is popular among bloggers and growing in popularity among website builders. (It’s all I use to build websites).

WordPress comes in two forms.

WordPress.com allows you to use the software which they host on their servers for you. This makes it super easy if you have no clue about website hosting, but it does come with a lot of drawbacks. Customization is majorly limited as well as overall copyrights to your content.
WordPress.org is the version that I recommend. Primarily because in this day and age there is no excuse for NOT understanding what’s going on and being in control of your marketing, unless you are just lazy. But as a subscriber to this blog I’m sure that’s none of you . If you haven’t figured it out by now, I am passionate about you understanding how to take responsibility for your online presence. WordPress.org allows you to download the software onto the website of your choice. So I usually refer to this type of WordPress as a “self-hosted installation of WordPress”

Most of the time you don’t even need to know about WordPress.org since website hosting companies like GoDaddy, HostMonster or HostGator have 1-click installations of WordPress through Simple Scripts or Fantastico. If you’d like to see how simple it is to install wordpress check out the video on How to Install WordPress with GoDaddy. (Note: this video was shot about a year ago so it doesn’t represent the current version of WordPress but the installation process is still the same)

How to Stop Spam Comments Automatically

photo credit: finalcut

If you feel like you spend more time deleting spam comments on your blog than actually creating content then you need the Akismet plugin.

This free plugin automatically makes comment and trackback spam a non-issue, allowing you more time to make your blog work for you!

Most of the time Akismet is already installed when you set up a self-hosted installation of WordPress. All you need to do is activate it.

In order to activate you need to get an API key by registering your email address with akismet.com. No worries they won’t spam you here – your email is safe.

The API key is then emailed to you.

Go try this out now for yourself!

P.S. I’ve noticed that I even get spam comments on my squeeze pages because I build these with WordPress, so you’ll need to make sure Akismet is activated on every installation of WordPress you have.

The #1 All Time Must Have Plugin for Wordpress

If you have me set up your blog, website or landing page with WordPress, I always include a few of my favorite plugins as standard installations.

TinyMCE Advanced is my #1 “Must Have” for anyone who doesn’t have an advanced degree in HTML.

The TinyMCE Advanced plugin allows you to:

easily create & edit tables (very important to use to make sure your text stays where you want it on the page)
change the font style
change the font size
add emoticons like
add date and time stamp
spell check
layer content on the page
search & replace

…and much more!

If you need help using WordPress, find out when our next “WordPress Wednesday” workshop is.

How to Take Your Blog Posts to the Next Level

photo credit: audreyjm529

Adding photos to your blog posts can be a great way to visually convey your written message as well as bring an added entertainment element.

I’ve just come across a great WordPress Plugin called Photo Dropper that’ll save you time and energy when it comes to adding photos to your posts.

This plugin searched for Creative Commons licensed photos-images that are licensed for shared use-and lets you drop them into your posts right from the WordPress visual editor.

Once you install and activate the plugin a new icon will show in the “Upload/Insert” area of your post editor. Simply place your cursor where you want the photo to be inserted and click the PhotoDropper icon and search for images related to your keywords.

After you find an image you like, you can select from a small, medium or large version of that picture and the image and the photo credits will be added to your post.

Let me know how using this plugin works for you by leaving a comment below.

Who Else Wants a Quicker Way to Use Linkedin

Did you know that you can search LinkedIn from your web browser without having to actually login to Linkedin?

With the Linkedin Firefox Toolbar or Linkedin Internet Explorer Toolbar you can!

With the Linkedin Toolbar you can:

Bookmark Linkedin profiles, searches and jobs
Search using built-in LinkedIn Search Engines
Remember Linkedin Pages and easily go back to them
Find connections with the JobsInsider
See LinkedIn profile information for every email you receive via Yahoo!, Hotmail, Gmail and AOL

Pretty cool huh? By the way…are we connected on Linkedin?

Your Most Powerful Story

If you find yourself not getting the response or engagement you would like from your current social media efforts then maybe you should take a look at the ‘story’ you are telling. The stories we often come up with ourselves are very ego driven and less than memorable.

If we’d stop and take a look at what’s being said about you, then you might be able to tap into a very entertaining and engaging world of stories to share. Take a look at the conversations to see:

How are you described or recommended by friends and customers?
What words do others use to describe you when recommending your products or services?
What stories do others tell their friends about your talents and skills?
What do others brag about you on your behalf?

Looking at what others find memorable enough to remember and repeat can help you identify your most powerful strengths and the stories you should be sharing with your social network to further speed your social media marketing success.

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