WordPress 3 for Business Bloggers

by Paul Thewlis, Lydia May Morris (Proofreader), Tejal Daruwale (Indexer)

Promote and grow your WordPress blog with advanced marketing techniques, plugins, advertising, and SEO In Detail WordPress makes the business of blogging easy. But there's more to a successful business blog than just churning out posts. You need to understand the advanced marketing and promotion techniques to make your blog stand out from the crowd, attract visitors, benefit your brand, and deliver a worthwhile return on your investment. WordPress 3 for Business Bloggers shows you how to use WordPress to run your business blog. It covers everything you need to develop a custom look for your blog, use analytics to understand your visitors, market your blog online, and foster connections with other bloggers to increase your traffic and the value of your blog. You begin by identifying your blog's strategic goals before going step-by-step through the advanced techniques that will grow your blog to its full business potential. You will learn how to build a custom theme for your blog and incorporate multimedia content like images and video. Advanced promotion techniques like SEO and social media marketing are covered in detail before you learn how to monetize your blog and manage its growth. WordPress 3 for Business Bloggers will help you to create a blog that brings real benefits to your business. What you will learn from this book Approach This is a practical, hands-on book based around a fictitious case study blog, which you will build on a development server using WordPress. The case study grows chapter by chapter, from installing your local development server, right up to the finished blog. Who this book is written for This book is for anybody running or starting a business blog using WordPress, whether you plan to use your blog for PR and marketing, or want to profit directly from blogging.

440 pages, ebook

First published December 1, 2011

Reviews

[Michael Carnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thewlis walks you through not only how to install and setup plug-ins, but why you are doing so and what results should be achieved. That in itself is probably the strongest trait of the book – it goes into the “whys” behind the “whats” and “hows”. In fact, this is one of the only books I have seen that really asks you to think about why you are using a blog. Early on Thewlis says, “a successful business blog is achieved by identifying strategic goals and applying these to the type of blog you are publishing.” That is something a lot of people – even highly paid web developers – miss. What is your goal, and how is your website or blog supposed to help you achieve that goal?

I would recommend WordPress 3 For Business Bloggers for the people who want to take their blog or WordPress based website on to the next level but don’t know where to start. It can be intimidating when you don’t even know what questions to ask, and Thewlis gives solid exposure to most all areas so you can know where you want to dive deeper. The one thing I would warn against is getting tied up in details, such as the chapters on theming, where you really don’t need to. Just read through those chapters for the background knowledge and move on.

For my full, and much longer, review of this book, check out my website at http://www.michaelcarnell.com/