If they are a new visitor they will get a message displayed on posts suggesting they might like to subscribe to your RSS feed. Returning visitors can receive an alternative message.

Most things can be configured:

How many times a new visitor needs to visit before the message changes from new visitor to returning visitor (the default is 5)

What message the new visitor should be. Editable html.

What message the returning visitor should see, again editable html.

Where you want the message to appear, top of post, bottom of post etc.

The plugin is very easy to install and configure.

Who is Seth Godin? His blog is here.

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There are some automated submitter software programs around that will automatically submit your rss feeds to the blogging directories but my advice is take the long hall & do it yourself manually. Also it’s possible to outsource this task for not very much money but again, for now (certainly the first time), make the effort and do it by hand yourself. That way you will learn something else about blogging, find useful sites where you should continue your promotion of your blog and probably get to see some successful blog sites.

I’ll add to the list below as I slowly add this blog and its RSS feed to the sites.

So far I’ve added the blog/RSS feed to:

Blloggs
Blogarama
Blogburst
BlogCatalog
Blogs Directory
Blog Folders
Bloggapedia, Blog Directory - Find It!
Blogfinds
Blogged
Blogexplosion

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Why are Tags important?

1) They are great for Search Engine Optimisation. Search engines love to see a concise collection of words that directly reflect the content on your page.

2) They are good for your site visitors - they enable them to see quickly what your site is about and what’s important on your site.

3) They are good for site navigation. All the words tagged are hot linked to pages containing that tag. So a visitor wanting to quickly see what’s on your site about a particular tagged topic just needs to click on the Tag Cloud link.

4) They can help categorise your site content while it’s being pinged to your ping list.

It is strongly recommended that you add the plugin Simple Tags to your blog.  It’s easy enough to install although once installed there are many setting that can seem all a bit confusing… they did to me anyway.

I’ll try & go through some of the settings.

Various hooks get installed into your WordPress admin pages that allow configuration of the plugin. In the Admin pages there are 3 new menu items created under the Post option - these are “Manage Tags, Mass Edit Tags and Auto Tags”. When you add or edit a post or page there are a number of items added to the page: a box marked Tags (Simple Tags) top right and ‘Click tags’ & ‘Suggested Tags’ boxes at the bottom of the page. Then lastly on the Settings menu you’ll notice a new submenu “Simple Tags”

At the moment I’m only going to touch on a few of the settings I’ve configured and lead you through simply tagging a post. It’s a subject that warrants a much more detailed visit further down the line.

On the Settings/Simple Tags Options page I’ve made the following changes from default:

Embedded Tags Tab: Use Embedded Tags - Enabled

Tags for Current Post Tab: Automatically display tags list into post content - All

Related Posts Tab: Automatically display related posts into feeds - Enabled

Automatically display related posts into post content - Singleonly

Tag Cloud Tab: I changed the least & most popular colour to better suit my theme

When you come to make a post the easiest way I’m finding at the moment to tag it is: First write your text and then go down to the bottom of the page and click on ‘Suggested tags from: Tag the Net’. This looks at the page text you have written and creates a suggested list of tags. Now just click on the tags you want to use and each tag will get transferred to the Tags (Simple Tags) at the top of the page.

The tags shown in ‘Tags (Simple Tags)’ will get added to your page and incorporated into your ‘Tag Cloud’ when you publish the topic. If there are any keywords on the page that aren’t in your list and you think should be there just manually add them, separated by commas. The last thing to do is select all the keywords in the ‘Tags (Simple Tags) box’ and add them to your post between a [tags and /tags] - remember we enabled that option in the setting options menu. These will not be seen in your post but will be pinged to those sites in your ping list.

I know it seems like a lot of work but it isn’t really that difficult to set up & use and the rewards should be well worth it.

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Now to get the full benefit from Technorati you need to be signed up with them and claim your blog. Taken from their Faq pages:

What does Claiming my blog do for me?

Claiming your blog establishes that you are its owner, and allows you to use Technorati services to increase your blog’s visibility. Some services include:

1) Being able to associate your profile with your blog as it’s author as well include a blog description on your Blog’s page at http://technorati.com/blogs/
2) Being able to have your blog listed in the Blog Directory and Blog Search under its blog tags.
3) Being able to associate your profile with your blog in Keyword and Tag Search results.
4) Become eligible as a featured contributing blogger in our channel pages
5) Being able to use and install Technorati Widgets such as “Favorite Me” and the Embed Widget(Technorati Authority, Technorati search box, profile photo, “Member profile” link, “Linking blogs” link, Tag cloud, Blog reactions, and Favorites) for your blog.
6) Places your blog in a higher priority queue for indexing when the ping is received.

After you have signed up with them you can claim your blog very easily. You need to temporarily add some code to your blog that Technorati provide on your claim page. Once they have checked the code is there you can remove it and complete your claim. The easiest way to temporarily add the code is to include it in a text Widget in your WordPress. First go to Technorati & cut the code to your clipboard. Then go to your WordPress admin page, click on Appearance & Widgets & then on ‘Add’ next to the Text Widget. On the right hand side of your page the Widget should appear with an Edit link, click the link & paste in the code. Save your changes. Check your Wordpress site and you should see a Technorati Profile link. Once you’ve completed your claim & Technorati have confirmed the link is there (& therefore you really do own the page) you can delete the widget.

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Fortunately those nice people at Google have come to the rescue with Google Analytics. Simply by adding a small piece of Javascript to your pages they can track lots of stats about your site and it will provide you with the information you need. You need to sign up for an Analytics account at Google but that takes only a couple of minutes and is free.

As well as your Analytics account you need to add a Plugin to your WordPress site. Go to your WordPress Admin page & at the bottom of the left hand menus you’ll see ‘Plugins’ - click that link. Then again on the left hand side under Pluggins you’ll see an ‘Add New’ link appear - click that. In the Search Term box that now appears on the main page type analytics and hit Search. You’ll now be presented with a list of 20 or so Plugins that can add that importand Google code. I added Google Analyticator.

To add the plugin click on ‘Install’ on the right hand side of the page. You’ll then get a description of the plugin. Read the Description, Installation & Faq tabs to make sure it does what you want and if all is ok click on the red Install button. You’ll then land up on a page where you need to enter the ftp or sftp details to get into your site. Enter the correct information and then Proceed. In a few seconds the plugin will be uploaded to your WordPress, click on Activate the plugin.

Now on your ‘Installed Plugins’ page make sure the plugin is listed under the ‘Current Active Plugins’. If it was Google Analyticator you added you’ll need to click on the link to the options page in the description. Very easy to set up here - set logging to Enabled, enter your Google Analytics UID (see below if you haven’t got that yet) and then set the Advanced Options as required. I don’t track admin logins, have footer tracking enabled and outbound link tracking enabled. Click on ‘Save Changes’ when you’ve completed your setup.

If you didn’t setup a Google Analytics website profile when you opened your Google Analytics account now is the time to do that. Setting that up will give you the UID code you need to put in your Analyticator plugin. Go to Google Analytics, log in and then click on ‘Add Website Profile’. Select ‘Add a Profile for a new domain’ and in the box below that type in your website url. Select your Time Zone & click on Finish. A tracking Status Information page will come up, in there you will be able to see your Web Property ID - that’s the tracking code you need for your Analyticator plugin, cut and paste it into the options page.

That’s it about done… Go to your Google Analytics settings page & check the website profile you set up is there. If you’ve installed the WordPress plugin correctly you should see a green tick in the Status column to show that the code is being picked up correctly from your website. It takes about 24 hrs to start seeing report data from your site.

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The ping list is a list of blog directories and search engines that get notified when you make a blog. The bigger the list the better chance you have of attracting traffic - so here’s the list I’m using:

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

To add this to Wordpress 2.7 go to your admin page and click on Settings on the left hand side at the bottom & then Writing to set the Writing settings. Then add the list of URL’s above to the update services & then click on ‘Save Changes’.

Now each time you add to your blog this long list of service url will be advised.

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I started by installing the latest version of WordPress - that’s version 2.7 & available free from http://www.wordpress.org. I won’t bother going into every install detail here and duplicating what is already very well documented. Installing it is very simple - unzip the download, copy all the files to your server (home directory in my case). Create an MySQL database and run the install.php file. Follow the onscreen instructions.

The next exercise was to choose a good WordPress theme. There are many, many themes to choose from. A search on Google for “wordpress theme” shows nearly 17 million hits. Wordpress is a very flexible bit of software and it’s only a few simple clicks to install a new theme, so it’s easy to try a few and see which ones suit you. Whatever one you choose you must make sure it’s Widget enabled - that makes it very easy for you to add new functionality to the sidebars on the theme. If it doesn’t have Widgets it’s not Web 2.0.

The other major consideration is, should it have 2 columns or 3? If you choose 3 columns should the major page text be on the left, centre, or right? For the moment I have chosen 2 columns with the sidebar on the right. I might change this later but it’s fine as a starting point.

The theme I chose was Conceptnova by http://www.headsetoptions.org/

I added some detail to the About page and added the post you are reading now.

In the following days I’ll start to add some of the special addons you can add to Wordpress and start to incorporate some of the Social Marketing aspects to the blog to increase it readership.

A lot of what I’m going to be doing is taken from an eBook called the Authority Black Book. This eBook was first published in 2007 and has recently been updated to the 2009 edition. Grab your free copy if you like and check that I’m doing everything right

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