How to Not Make Your WordPress Website Public
A while back, I had the privilege of working with a digital native who is now a client. He had a brilliant mind, was very ambitious, and had a burning desire to be the best at what he did. He also had an exceptional eye for design and UX and was adamant about being the best in his industry. While I’m not naive enough to think that my capabilities and insights are equal to his, I was able to see the benefit of having someone with his unique perspective and drive. Working with a client is not always easy, but every time we discussed a new project milestone, his desire to create the best possible product became more and more transparent. Although our styles and approaches to problem solving were often different, I always knew that I could rely on him to push me to be better and to strive for excellence.
The product that he and his team produced was outstanding, and it was obvious that a lot of thought went into every aspect of it. For a while, it was the best damn product in its category, if not the entire industry. It was so good that it started picking up speed and eventually caught the eye of a serial entrepreneur who acquired the company. Since then, it has been through multiple redesigns, and the team at Beezy have taken the extra mile to ensure that it remains fresh and of the highest quality. But at its core, the product is the same—superb design, data-driven functionality, and a user experience that is second to none.
Because of its popularity and established user base, WordPress has become a kind of blogging platform in its own right. If you’re a seasoned blogger who is looking for ways to gain more traction and engage an audience, you could consider a WordPress site as a way to do that. You might also decide to go this route if you’re keen to experiment with different design elements and don’t want to put too much thought into the layout of your existing blog. Of course, there are a lot of other reasons why you might want to consider a WordPress site, and for the best results, it’s important to keep a few key pointers in mind.
Keep To The Basics
If you’re new to blogging or you’ve been blogging for a while and are looking to take your talents to the next level, one of the things you can do is reassess your strategy. Are you still relying on older methods of attaining audience, such as relying on SEO or guest blogging to gain popularity? Or are you exploring newer techniques that can help you to grow your blog?
When I first got into blogging, my strategy was essentially to just throw anything and everything I could at the wall to see what would stick. I would experiment with different designs, see which ones performed the best, and then build on that. However, over time, I noticed that some of the posts that I had crafted just a few months before weren’t holding up nearly as well as the original content that I had created a few years ago. In some cases, the earlier posts were even getting more engagement than the newer content. So, in order to stay fresh, I had to revisit my strategy and ensure that my posts still had that “new article” feel to them even though they were several years old. In other words, I needed to keep things simple and the focus should be on writing good content that is valuable and engaging.
Make Sure That You’re Publishing Every Week
While it’s great to have a blog that you can pour your creative energies into, if your posts aren’t showing up every week then it can be a real pain for your audience. Even the best blogs will struggle to stay fresh and engage with their audience if they don’t put out quality content on a regular basis. As a result, you’re far more likely to gain and keep an audience if you can provide value and consistency.
This doesn’t mean that you have to post every day, but it does mean that you need to put out content on a consistent basis. If you have a blog that you’ve been keeping busy with plenty of content, but are starting to feel a little stifled because you’re putting out so much of the same content, consider taking a little bit of a break. You could always head back to the drawing board and try to come up with some fresh ideas for posts, or you could even decide to focus on a certain theme for a while and try to tackle it from a new angle. Whatever you do, make sure that you’re not stagnating—keep challenging yourself and pushing your content to the next level. Your audience will thank you for it.
Make Sure That Your Content Is Of Good Quality
Even if you do keep things simple, you can still make your content look and feel like it was crafted by a professional. One of the things that you can do is make sure that your fonts are of good quality and that your illustrations are of a high enough resolution so that they don’t look pixelated when printed. You can also use a software program like Photoshop to clean up any skin tones and fix any mistakes that were made during the illustration process. And last but not least, make sure that you reference all the key sources that you use – proper citation is extremely important and can help to elevate your content from being a simple blog post to being a respected source of information.
If you want to really impress your audience and stake your claim as an authority on your topic, you need to make sure that your content is of the highest quality. With a little bit of effort, a lot of research, and some patience, you’ll be able to attain that polished look that makes all the difference.
Incorporate Digital Marketing
Blogs and websites are only as good as their reach. Just because you’ve got a lovely blog with great content on a reputable site doesn’t mean that you’ll immediately gain a following. To put it bluntly, you’ll need some kind of digital marketing plan in place in order to drive traffic to your site and gain the traction that you need to be able to grow your blog. This could include things like search engine marketing (SEO), content marketing, or even social media marketing. It depends on your target audience and the type of blog that you’ve got – SEO might be a good fit for a fashion blog, while content marketing might be a better fit for a lifestyle or food blog.
The beauty of digital marketing is that you don’t necessarily need to have a large budget in order to get started. You can use free tools like Google Analytics to track the traffic that comes to your site and then use that data to determine how you should evolve your strategy moving forward. For example, you might decide that initially you’ll want to do more SEO because you think that that’s where your target audience is heading—but then you realize that they’re actually landing on your site because there’s lots of valuable content there that they’re eagerly seeking.
Make Sure That You Focus On A Single, Easy-To-Follow Theme
If you’re finding that you’re struggling to keep your content fresh and interesting, one option could be to switch up your theme. If you’ve been using the same theme for your blog for a while—even if it is a free theme—it might be time for an upgrade. There are plenty of gorgeous, free WordPress themes out there, and it’s important to find one that is functional, easy to use, and fits your blog’s content and style. Once you’ve found it, it’s a simple matter of switching over to it and updating your blog’s look and feel. This will help to keep things interesting for your audience and will give your content that extra polish that makes all the difference.
Make Sure That You Keep Track Of Your Site’s Performance
To ensure that you’re always publishing fresh content and never out of ideas, one option could be to track the performance of your blog on a daily basis. Use a tool like Google Analytics to pull in data on the number of visitors to your site, the locations from which they’re coming from, and the patterns that they’re using on your site (for example, are they staying on a page for a particular length of time or are they bouncing around).