Design It Well

As an author, you recognize the importance of having an eye-catching book cover. Well, the same things goes for your landing page. Make it visually engaging for your visitors. Don’t burden the page down with heavy, lengthy content. Instead, incorporate elements from your book’s cover into the layout. Tie-in the book with the landing page and visitors will have a clear understanding about who you are, what your book is about and how to purchase a copy.

Get A Reaction

The landing page for your book’s website is like your own personal salesperson. For that reason, you want the page to share a compelling message that makes the page unique and that will increase conversion. This can be accomplished by writing a headline like, “Only 10,000 Copies Available,” or “Read the Bestseller That Critics Are Raving About.” Additionally, you want to be direct with your visitors and state a clear call-to-action such as “buy now” or “subscribe here.” Keep them short and sweet.

State the Value

Remember that whitespace is a friend to any good landing page. More is not better. Keep your content succinct and to the point. Save the flowery language for your book and use your landing page to give short, bullet points about why your book is a must-read and must-buy. Explain what sets it apart from other books within the genre and even one or two about yourself as an author. Visitors that know value are more likely to purchase.

When you create a landing page for your book try to think about what motivates you as a buyer. Use what you know and you’ll have a fantastic landing page constructed in no time.

Technorati Tags: blog design, book sales, Web Design, Web Development

Here’s a list of a few basic ones that add a great deal of benefits and create a great foundation of plug-ins to build on for any blog.

All in One SEO Pack

Now, you can use your WordPress blog for your SEO campaign. The free plugin “All in SEO pack” is designed for SEO with the help of WordPress blogs as it readily optimizes your blog. It automatically generates Meta Tags allowing your blog to get necessary exposure in search engines. While using the plugin, you can find the option to optimize your title and set Meta Description and Meta Keywords for your blog.

Sociable

Many social networking sites allow their users to save and share interesting online blog posts. The Sociable plugin of WordPress adds your blog links to your favorite social bookmarking sites. WordPress allows you to select from 99 different sites and add them to your blogs. The plugin works only on the recent versions of WordPress ie 2.6 or the later versions. The best part of using the plugin is you can distribute your blog posts among your readers on those sites and boost your niche audience.

WP Super Cache

This is a useful WordPress plugin to generate static HTML files from your WordPress blog which is served faster by the web server. Your web server won’t have to process heavier PHP scripts if you use this plugin. The plugin also enables 99% of your visitors to visit static HTML files. The plugin supports multiple storage back-ends such as Disk, eAccelerator, Memcached, APC, XCache. It doesn’t require any admin setting.

Contact Form 7

It is a contact form plugin of WordPress that supports multiple contacts. With the help of this plugin you can customize email content and the contact form flexibly. The plugin also supports CAPTCHA and AJAX powered submitting. You can activate this plugin for your blog from the ‘Plugins’ menu of the WordPress. The particular plugin has been translated into number of languages.

Google XML Sitemaps

The plugin automatically generates XML sitemap for the WordPress blog that is compliance with Google Sitemap. The feature is available with all versions of WordPress and it doesn’t require any PHP skill or file changes. The plugin also generates a zipped version of the file along with the static XML file. It supports all WordPress Generated and customized pages. The sitemap is automatically updated every time you update your existing blog or create new post. The major search engines are also notified about the updates.

FD Feedburner Plugin

The FD Feedburner redirects the main feed and the comments to feedburner.com. The feeds of your blog easily become the feed of the feedburner for all users.  It simply requires informing the plugin about the Feedburner feed URL. The plugin is available with WordPress 2.0 o higher versions of WordPress. It is also compatible with all webservers. It doesn’t require setting up new hidden feeds, modify templates, or .htaccess files.

WP-SpamFree

This powerful plugin is designed with spam filtering features and can check blog comment spam, pingback and trackback spam. The spam-free plugin automatically blocks the spam and displays the statistics of blocked spam on your dashboard. It uses cookies and dynamic combo of JavaScript and can prevent more that 99% of the spam. The plugin helps to keep your database less crowded.  It works like a “Firewall” and works in WordPress menu as well.

Akismet

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen. Personally, I can’t live without this one.

Google Analyticator

The plugin appends the tracking support of Google Analytics to your WordPress blogs. Google Analyticator is a customizable widget that eliminates the need of editing of you blog templates. The plugin includes other widgets that help to view visitors’ data generated by Analytics.  The blogger has complete control over the options and can enable and disable any of the option as per the requirements. Just install this plugin and track your visitors’ behavior in real time.

SEO Smart Links

The plugin has SEO benefits as it automatically links the keyword of your blog with corresponding posts, tags, categories. It allows you to select your keyword and phrases, and set up the matching URLs. You can also set the nofollow attributes and option to open the links in another window. The options can be edited from the administration setting panel. You can enhance internal linking of your site with the use of this plugin. It also allows you to control external links. So, you got your smart link builder for free, huh!

Broken Link Checker

The plugin monitors the links on your blog posts, pages, custom fields, and indicates if there is any. It detects the broken links and missing images, and notify on your dashboard. If you enable the option it can display the anchor texts differently on the post. A very useful WP plugin, it can save help you help you trace all broken links and fix them early enough.

Do you have a favorite?Is there are must have plug-in that I left off the list?

Technorati Tags: blog design, plugins, wordpress

take a virtual drink…

“So, 3 men walk into a blog…”

“A what?”

“A blog”

“Huh?”

“A blog”

“I don’t get it”

Neither do the big ad agencies

——————————————————

Sometime in the near future “walking into a blog” will make sense. I, for one, spend more time with friends, colleagues, peers, admirers, detractors, acquaintances and strangers discussing, debating, and conversing on blogs than anywhere else. You could say I do a lot of “virtual drinking”.

Of course having spent time in bars, I have come to notice some striking similarities. Walk through the swinging doors into your corner blog and you will encounter some characters. Perhaps you have met a few of these folks too.

The Blogaholic – He’s ubiquitous. Every blog you go to she’s there. He rambles, believing his diatribe invaluable. She shouts it at everyone she sees. The worst is when the Blogaholic owns the Blog.

Mr. Pick Up Line – He hits on everyone, with his spammy comments, hoping the law of averages pays off. One of these times, he figures, his line won’t end up in Askimet.

The Local Gang – Whoa Nellie! These people rule with intimidation. They hang out together. The conversational familiarity, Joint Ventures, work history or what have you point to multiple levels of connection. Lord help you if one hits on your blog with a comment and is rebuffed. The gang is offended. Retaliation ensues, perhaps subtly, perhaps not.

The Politician – He’s the self-styled Mayor of the place. He knows everyone and has a diplomatic manner. He comments on everything but seems to say nothing. You never really know his opinion, because he seems to know just how to side step an argument. His cultivated neutrality however, leaves you wondering.

The Flirt – She’s a wink and a nod kind of girl. Her comments smile at everyone. His stories sound a bit too good to be true. He’s very flash. It’s all window dressing though. They just wanted your attention, a quick hit of traffic. The minute you try to take the conversation to a deeper level, they’re gone.

The Blogtender – He appears on corporate blogs. A paid facilitator, his assures that everyone is drinking the Kool-Aid. He smoothes ruffled feathers, spouts policy, and occasionally tosses out a troublemaker. His number one priority is to make sure you are having a good time, so you will come back.

This is what puts the SOCIAL in Social Media. People are still people after all. And if you are using a blog for marketing then you must understand applied human psychology. It’s the foundation of interaction on the new frontier – the blogosphere.

Recognize your cast of characters. Speak to them. They are your repeat customers, no matter whether they are new to your blog or not. They serve a purpose. Great marketing starts here.

By the way, did I miss anybody you know? Copyright 2009 Leili McKinley

Technorati Tags: blog design, blogging, blogosphere, blogs