MattAdamo.net » Blogging, Internet Marketing…

Ok,  so in the last post i showed you how you how to start your own blog. If you haven’t yet read that post make sure you go and read that now.

How To Start A Blog in No Time Flat. Part 1

However in the last post i didn’t show you all of the cool plugins, design features, and other things that really make a blog….. a blog. So i’m going to take you into the back office of MattAdamo.Net and show you all of the stuff that i use to pimp it out.

Let’s first start off by explaining what a plugin is.

Since i host my own blog i have the freedom to do literally anything i want with it. The cool thing about wordpress is that it’s open source which means programmers can design little bits of code and scripts which can do cool things on their blogs. Then the programmers can upload these “plugins” as they’re called to wordpress.org where all wordpress members can use them.

(this is how easy it is for wordpress users to find and navigate to any specific plugin)

Notice #1 is an easy option selection. You can choose how you want to add plugins to your blog. Search for other plugins, upload your own, or see what’s new/popular.

Notice #2 is a search bar that searches by relevancy and keyword. It is extremely useful and very simple to use.

Plugins can do literally anything, from tracking your visitors, to showing your twitter account, to adding and opt in form on your page. While it is completely up to you to mess around with all types of plugins and see what suits your blog and what doesn’t, there are a few of them that are almost a necessity to any wordpress blog.

So these are some plugins that if you don’t already have installed i would go out and get them!

Plugin #1 – All in one Seo pack

The first one is called The All in One Seo Pack. This is probably my 100% most favorite plugin for how valuable it is. As you may or may not know, Seo rankings (how to rank on google, yahoo, ect) are very important these days as they are a huge determining factor as to how much traffic you get. Well this plugin makes your seo tasks way easier. The blog allows you to easily add a headline, add tags, and write a small description of the article without having to know code. The best part is that so many people don’t do simple seo tasks like this and having this small advantage can really make a difference in the long run. (this is what the interface of the plugin looks like)

Plugin #2 – OnlyWire for Wordpress

The onlywire plugin is the best plugin i have ever found for content syndication. Content syndication is just basically a term that means (get your content to as many places with the smallest amount of work). Onlywire which is a paid service is FREE if you have a wordpress blog which is amazing in my opinion. Basically it submits your post, video, or what ever other type of content you have to all of the major social bookmarking sites (digg, mixx, delicious, ect.). With one click of a button you can get over 30 pieces of content floating around the internet which means better searching engine results, more traffic, and more overall exposure. This is what the onlywire button looks like….

Plugin #3 – Sexy Bookmarks

Sexy bookmarks is another great way to syndication your content. You see most people don’t have an onlywire account however they do have accounts individually on each of the social bookmarking websites. So Sexy bookmarks allows readers to bookmark content individually. It’s also sick that it looks badass. This is what the SexyBookmarks plugin looks like, (also realize that it is a dropdown box)

Plugin #4 – Wickett Twitter Widget

This widget is the best twitter widget i have ever found. Lot’s of people have made twitter widgets however this one allows you to fully customize the colors of every aspect and shows it in a really nice interface. It also easily allows readers to find you on twitter and connect to you. This is what the Wickett Twitter Widget looks like.

Plugin #5 – TweetMeMe

TweetMeMe is another twitter plugin that easily allows blog followers to retweet content that they like. This is one of the absolute best plugins for making your content go viral. Not only that, but TweetMeMe will track every person who retweets your content. Pretty cool eh? This is what the tweet MeMe widget looks like….

Plugin #6 – WassUp or Wordpress Stats

These two plugins allow you to see how much traffic you are getting, where that traffic is coming from, if the google bots are coming to your website, who’s currently on your blog, and they do it all in a nice and easy interface. It gives you a graph to chart how visitors come and then it gives you a live log of EVERY SINGLE person that visits your blog. How cool is that! If you are going to be serious about blogging you need to be monitoring your traffic and other aspects of your blog to see what works and what doesn’t. Here is a quick shot of what the Wassup graph looks like.



So those are all of the widgets that i would recommend that you implement right away. Obviously i am using more widgets than this, however it’s important that you go out and find what widgets work best for you and your blog. However the next feature to building a blog is blog design.

This is how i do my blog design

The first step to blog design and the most important is picking a theme that looks nice. Obviously any theme can be edited to look any way you want, however the core components of the theme should be the basics of what YOU want in your blog. So the first part of having a sick blog design is picking a sick theme. In part one i recommended a few different ones that i love and use. Make sure you go and check those out.

However customizing the theme you have is a different process. As you can probably already tell i have a custom header on MattAdamo.Net which i think looks pretty sick. However i know absolutely NOTHING about web design. I actually outsourced the work to someone else and had it done for about 35$. In fact i probably could of had it done cheaper if  i new how to edit code, but i don’t know any of that so my designer did it all for me.

I highly recommend outsourcing as a way of getting things done on your blog. Your going to want to go over to either

http://www.Elance.com

http://www.Scriptlance.com <—- my personal favorite

http://www.GetAFreelancer.com

Create a project and wait as programmers bid on it. Then you can choose from a whole bunch of people who have lots of experience in the field at all different bid prices. You can pick who is most qualified, who has the best profile, who is offering the lowest price, or a combination of the bunch. The best part is that if i had to learn how to edit code and learn graphic design it could cost me way more than 35$ in my time and most likely money also. haha. And lastly it’s an amazing strategy because the demand is SOO high for freelance projects. (meaning there are a lot more programmers than there are jobs). So you can get your job done for a fraction of the real valued price.

Ok guys, so this ends my 2 part post on how to start a blog. I really hoped you like the information and screenshots i included.

If you liked this post please leave a comment or retweet it.

Thanks so much -Matt Adamo