The 7 Habits of Highly Effective WordPress Publishers

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective WordPress Publishers

Reader Comments (39)

  1. No doubt wordpress is the best platform for bloggers to enhance their writing skills and to become a Successful blogger
    It has unique features that no one else have.

  2. Your organization here is perfect for WordPress or any platform, a solid guide to build the kind of site you really want. You discuss being proactive and starting with the end goal, which is the fastest method to move in the right direction.

    You cannot be stationary, but you should not wander either. WordPress is powerful incrementally, so that you can begin immediately, with a strong goal, building and growing as time goes on. WordPress allows for this: movement toward a large goal with small steps.

    Sharpening your saw protects you from growing stagnant at whatever level you are right now, so you provide good advice for the veteran. WordPress is not perfect, but it certainly allows you to continually progress to a new level. Thank you for the advice that allows us to get to work.

    • Thank you for the comment Darin. And you make a good point about WordPress being imperfect. It is. It’s a tool, with strengths and weaknesses, as opposed to some type of panacea. It’s still the person behind the WordPress site that is the most important element of all.

  3. I think the two biggest things that have made a difference for me when it comes to WordPress publishing are:

    *A blog isn’t a business, and
    *The “Schedule” button is better than sliced bread

    Simply publishing posts to a WordPress blog isn’t going to make you money (unless you’re playing the long-odds end game of building a large enough audience to support either paid advertising or an eventual buy-out by a media company). Instead, a blog is a tool that can be used to build relationships with your audience members – though if you want to make money from those connections, there needs to be some other product or service in your sales funnel.

    And the “Schedule” ahead button has saved my ass more times than I can count. Having a few months’ worth of content pre-loaded means that I don’t get behind on my publishing calendar when I get busy (or when I’m just feeling lazy). It’s a far better approach for me than scrambling to finish last minute posts when deadlines have already passed ๐Ÿ™‚

    Thanks so much for the great tips!

    • Great points Sarah! In fact, that is one area I need to get better at myself: planning ahead and creating a content schedule. I love the process of sitting down and creating content, but I’m not always the best planner/organizer. It’s the next step in my development as a blogger. Have to sharpen that saw a bit. ๐Ÿ˜‰

  4. “But you have to at least have a potential end in mind to know which direction to start out in.”
    Completely agree with you on that one. If you don’t know where you want to go than any campaign you create will ultimately end up spinning it’s wheels. Your goals can change, but you at least need to make some!

    • Absolutely! It’s like getting in a car without knowing your destination. You’ll go somewhere…but it’ll take you longer than it should and probably won’t be the best destination or the one you really want to arrive at.

  5. As a website designer/developer, I always set folks up on WordPress for a lot of the reasons you’ve stated. Plus, it’s incredibily easy to use for everyone involved and the expansion capabilities for even the novice user are practically endless. While Drupal and Joomla may be the preffered platforms for many developers, it seems the average user has a much easier time managing the WordPress dashboard and the WordPress community continues to do an incredible job of maintaining the usability of the software.

    • I have found this myself Jose. Any CMS is daunting at first for people who are unfamiliar with managing and maintaining a website. But WordPress seems to be the one, especially out of those you mentioned, with the shortest learning curve.

    • As a developer myself, I suspect recent improvements in the WordPress core with respect to coding practices are going to attract a lot more developer attention. The code up until recently has been a bit difficult in places, but that’s changing fast, which is really cool. This is necessary for enabling WordPress as a general application platform: a good platform is turning into a great platform!

  6. Great points, Jerod. I liked the point “Begin with the end in mind”. Before launching a blog or site you must have clear focus or vision in mind. Most of us just launch a blog just because every one in you circle have one and you don’t want to get isolated. Since it’s a daunting task, one must have clear objectives before launching a blog.

  7. I also like the idea of begin with the end in mind. Do you want people to call, register for your newsletter, buy – what is the goal. Keep in mind you have 3 seconds to get someone to stay or go, and if they go they rarely come back. So it doesn’t have to be STUNNING, but the site does need to look professional!

  8. Thanks for this. I am new to this game and sometimes my own inherent ability to understand Internet etiquette fails. There are some things I see others do that bug the heck out of me, so I don’t do it (like post a blog link on someone else’s blog or FB wall). Then there’s other things, like posting a link to my own blog in a comment, that I wasn’t totally sure about. Thanks for the help out!

    • Haha, did I do that? ๐Ÿ˜‰ The general rule with links is that if the link will provide important additional information/context for the reader, then it’s relevant, whether it’s to your own site or anywhere else. So long as you do that, I don’t think anyone would have an issue with you linking to your site for reference.

  9. Thanks a lot for this useful Article,I have started with Joomla then landed on Drupal and finally WordPress.I recommend WordPress to bloggers who just want to focus on their content and everything else WordPress manges it for you.

  10. Dope post “Keep The End in Mind” I think that is super important. Having a compelling intention about where you want to be makes doing the work everyday so much easier. I have been battling with this issue for sometime now, but I am finally know what direction I want to take and who I want to help. What about you?

  11. Great article. I’m always amazed by what I can do with WordPress. It also reminded that Stephen Covey’s book is on my list of books to read over the holidays.

  12. Great Post! Having the end in mind will help answer the questions that always seem to come up when looking at themes, plugins, etc. Just because you can load it on your site, doesn’t mean you should.

    I recently migrated to WordPress from Blogger, and I am hooked for life. I also have some experience with Joomla/Mambo, and WordPress tops them by far for ease of use and functionality. I would whole-heartedly recommend WordPress to any blogger. Along with a link to this post. Great job!

  13. I totally agree with you on this “The greatest strengths of WordPress can also be its greatest weaknesses”. Plug-in does fantastic job, but if you are not careful enough you might end up flooding your blog with plug-ins. I am currently using 11 plug-ins and it has being a great fight for me to slash them down. They all seems to be very useful bet it is also affecting the performance of my blog.
    My blog is still very new, and i am trying to build links, with reference to point four,( if you want to receive, you need to give to others) should i link to other blogs.

  14. I like these 7 habits and decided to link one of my articles to this post. So far the best experience I have is connecting with others in the WordPress community – it gives me good sense of direction. Great article. Everything is well written.

  15. Hi again Jarod,
    I re-read this post and one of the things I see over and over as a theme is asking myself the questions, what can I give, or do, for others through my blog. Frankly, I have not thought of that other than in great content or inspiration. But this post, as well as others, has helped me start to look beyond what I am doing now and find more ways to give…like syndicating other bloggers I really believe in and chatting them up on FB or other social networking sites. And I hope to do more in the future. Thanks for your inspiration to me!

  16. Hey Jerod,

    nice article & way to go using Covey’s well known 7 Habits to write something compelling about copywriting. I like that you took the exact habits and related them to copywriting & did so very well. I did something similar, using the concept of 7 habits (though not the exact titles) for saving, i.e. The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Savers though I never realized that Covey had died.

    In most contexts, particularly business, I’d say #2 is the most important, however reading your article above and thinking about this in terms of copywriting, I’d have to say that 4&5 win hands down – i.e. it’s all about the person you’re writing for (which is hopefully the reader and not yourself).

    Interesting stuff…

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