Are you a food blogger looking to improve your site and attract new readers?
According to Fine Dining Lovers, there are an estimated 3 million food bloggers. Whether you’re a chef, a foodie, or part of the growing army of professional food writers, you know that blogging about food influences what people eat and how they find recipe or restaurant recommendations.
If you’re a food blogger, your site should show off your content and images. In this post, you’ll learn about the Jetpack features that can help you accomplish this. With a visually appealing and welcoming site, you’ll increase reader engagement and earn a loyal following of food fans.
Let’s get started!
Continue reading → How Jetpack Can Help Food Bloggers Thrive
Since the advent of the smartphone, it’s rare to find a website that isn’t optimized for use on mobile devices. Managing your website via your phone or tablet, however, is still a fairly new concept.
Managing your site from a mobile device makes running a business more convenient. It’s beneficial for photographers who want to upload photos from their smartphones, bloggers who are inspired by their surroundings on-the-go, ecommerce sellers who want to keep tabs on their site stats, and any other type of website owner.
Let’s take a look at a few ways you can manage your WordPress site from your mobile device, and some tips for getting the most out of your mobile experience with Jetpack.
Continue reading → Tips for Managing Your Site from Your Mobile Device
Even if you’ve been using it for years, you might be unfamiliar with some of Jetpack’s features. With the wide range of capabilities offered, it’s too easy for some of the coolest — and perhaps the most useful — tools to go unnoticed.
Today we’re going to look at four features that are lesser known, but just as powerful as those you might already be familiar with. These features will ultimately enhance your WordPress site in new ways, from improving its design to taking the hassle out of maintenance.
Continue reading → Four Jetpack Features Worth Exploring
Note: Publicize is now auto-share and is part of Jetpack Social.
Imagine that you’re opening up a riding camp for horse enthusiasts. How can you encourage more campers to participate? This isn’t your typical business, so you wouldn’t expect its success to depend on website traffic; however, every business grows or fades due in part to the popularity of its website. To succeed, your riding camp’s website must attract and engage its visitors.
Whether you’re a blogger or a business owner, producing valuable content for your visitors is a must — but it’s only the first step. If you want your hard work to pay off with tangible results, you’ll need to find ways to place interesting content in front of your ideal audience members to keep them coming back.
So, how do you get started? There are several ways to promote your content, including sharing posts on your social media channels or improving your site’s search engine optimization.
Engaging content keeps your new readers on your site the first time, but it’s up to you to keep them coming back for more. One of the best ways? Encourage them to subscribe to your content.
You might think you need to do something drastic to gain subscriptions, but small changes can have big impact. This is especially true if you’re just starting your site or are new to growing a subscriber base.
Let’s take a look at how you can earn more subscribers with three small but effective changes to your site.
Publishing content on a regular basis is a great strategy to increase your website’s organic traffic — website visitors who didn’t get to your site by clicking on an ad. But getting those readers is only half the battle.
If you want visitors to subscribe to your newsletter, make a purchase, or engage with your content in any way, you have to keep their attention long enough for a meaningful interaction.
Here are three tips that will help you publish engaging content.
Continue reading → How To Create Content That Keeps Your Readers Coming Back
Every website owner, from blogger to eCommerce entrepreneur, wants visitors to engage with their site. The longer you keep a visitor around, the more invested they become in your brand — and the more likely they are to make a purchase or subscribe to your content.
That’s why it’s important to capture their attention, increase the time spent on each page, and keep them clicking through your site past the page they landed on.
1. Keep them reading with relevant content
A great way to keep your readers on your site longer is to entice them with more of your own content — but in a targeted way that speaks to their interests.
When a reader is already on a post, you can show them related content below to keep them clicking and reading. To do this with your WordPress site, just activate Jetpack’s Related Posts feature.
To start using Related Posts, visit Jetpack → Settings → Traffic → Related Posts and select the Show related content after posts option.
PRO TIP: It’s a good idea to always include relevant images in your posts. When you select the Show a thumbnail image where available option, your Related Posts sections will be that much more compelling.
2. Make your content easy to access
Keep your readers engaged by showing just how much there is to explore on your site at a glance. By featuring links to content in a sidebar or footer area, you can make it easy to access more posts and pages and keep your readers around longer.
Make use of your website’s real estate by adding lists and links to your content in your widget and menu areas. Widget areas could be your sidebar, footer, or other blocks of content built into the design of your WordPress theme.
Use the Top Posts & Pages Widget to promote your content with the most views. To add a widget, go to Appearance → Widgets. Then, select one of the many widget options to link to your posts and pages. You can add the Top Posts & Pages Widget, the Display WordPress Posts Widget, a Categories widget, or you could generate a tag cloud to help people find content related to specific topics.
If you’re unable to find the Top Posts & Pages Widget, make sure that you have the Widgets feature enabled from Jetpack → Settings → Writing:
PRO TIP: using Jetpack’s Widget Visibility feature, you can have complete control over where widgets do – and do not – appear across your site. This allows you to better target visitors with relevant links and content, depending on which page they’re currently browsing.
3. Highlight your content using image widgets
Another fun and effective way to advertise your content is using Jetpack’s Image widget. You can add temporary images linking to interesting posts, popular products, items currently on sale, or any content where you’re looking to drive lots of traffic.
Use this flexible feature to create your very own advertisements directly on your site. The visual cues will direct a reader’s attention to the content or products you want them to explore. This can be very useful for eCommerce sites, service providers, and websites offering special promotions.
When you add a new Image widget to your site, you can either select an image that has already been uploaded to your media library, upload a brand new image from your computer, or insert an image directly from a URL.
PRO TIP: If you need some help creating compelling promotional images or badges, we recommend checking out Canva (it’s free!). In just a few minutes – with no design experience required – you can be up and running with a beautiful design.
4. Communicate through clear navigation
It’s important to remember that if your content isn’t linked in your navigation menu or promoted on your homepage, your visitors may simply never find it. Make sure everything is easy to access bycreating custom menus in your menu or widget areas.
These could be short menus or a single complex drop-down menu. Either way, the goal is to make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site with a thoughtful and straight-forward menu structure. When your content is categorized and put on display, it becomes much more pleasant and intuitive to explore your site.
Learn how to create and customize your menus from Appearance → Menushere.
PRO TIP: While you’ll definitely want to include all of your static and important pages in your primary navigation, don’t be afraid to include links to other content that you’re trying to promote. This can include posts or even external links. If you want your visitors to see something, getting it in front of them on the home page and in the primary site navigation is really important.
Use these tips to keep your visitors engaged
Whether you run a personal website or a large eCommerce marketplace, you don’t just want traffic: you want your readers to engage with your website in a meaningful way. That’s why it’s important to reward them with relevant content that delivers on their expectations and adds value to their lives.
The more readers enjoy being on your site, the longer they’ll stay — and the more likely they will become a subscriber or customer. A proven way to build your following is to use Jetpack’s Related Posts feature, the Top Posts & Pages Widget, Image widgets, and WordPress’ custom menu feature to make it easier for your readers to engage.
What about you? What tips do you have to keep visitors on your site for longer? Share them with us in the comments.
At the beginning of each month, we’ll round up five of our favorites links around the internet to help you better run your business or blog in the month ahead.
Get ready for a focused December with the help of these five useful resources.
Websites are crucial to any business, and are often the first thing clients or customers see. WebsiteMagazine offers a few examples of the features you can expect from updated websites in 2017.
“Designers – and the brands that employ them – cannot have their head in the mud when it comes to the trends impacting user expectations and how visible their sites will be on the increasingly sophisticated search engine result pages. Rather, you should be productive and advocate for better design.”
Producing quality content is key, even if you are a one-person army. Jeff Bullas gives us ten hacks for proofing our own content before hitting publish.
“The last thing you want to do is publish a blog post that has errors or doesn’t read well. Remember, your content is representative of your business!”
When you’re running your own startup, it can be tough to stay organized and on track. Entrepreneur’s Han-Gwon Lung shares exactly what you’ll need to keep up with other productive entrepreneurs.
“When I graduated from college, I had no work experience. And that didn’t sit too well with the real life that followed. I repeatedly messed up at work or fell behind schedule because I lacked good productivity habits. Before long, I realized I needed help. So I turned to productivity apps for answers.”
Looking to streamline your social media content strategy? Hubspot’s Sophia Bernazzani rounds up four tools to make social media pros’ lives a little easier.
“What do cross-country road trips, wedding speeches, and social media marketing have in common? You could wing all three, but it’s probably better to have a plan for what direction you’re heading — especially when it comes to your social media content strategy.”
The personal blogs of marketers you admire offer glimpses into their lives — and why they’re so successful. Alfred Lua from Buffer compiled a list of the best blogs to draw inspiration from.
“I like to think that reading the blog of a marketer I admire is like having a coffee with them and getting a chance to learn all about their approach to marketing.”
Have a link we should consider for next month? Drop it in the comments below!
You just started a blog and you’re ready to share it with the world. (Welcome to the wonderful world of blogging!)
Lucky for you, you’ve stumbled onto our blog, so hopefully you’ve been given the good advice to install Jetpack. Jetpack is a plugin for WordPress with many features (cough, cough, more than 40) to make your life as a blogger a whole lot easier.
With so many features to explore, where to begin? We’ve got you covered.
If you’re new to blogging (or to Jetpack), activate these five features first.
1. Keep your site safe and secure with Brute Force Protection.
This feature allows you to protect your site against brute force attacks, which sadly, are becoming more and more of a frequent concern for website owners. By enabling Brute force protection, your site will automatically block unwanted login attempts.
2. Spread the love on social media with Sharing.
Make it super simple for your blog readers to share your posts!
Sharing lets you add buttons to blog posts to give readers the ability to share a post to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and a host of other social media/web services to amplify your message.
3. Keep readers on your website longer with Related Posts.
Help readers better navigate your site by pointing them to related content you know they’ll love based on the blog post they’re currently reading.
Related Posts scans all of your posts, analyzes them, and selects at least three related archived blog posts to showcase underneath or above your post. This helps readers figure out what to read next and keeps them on your site even longer.
4. Be the first to know when your website experienced downtime with Monitor.
Ugh. Dreaded website downtime. It’s never fun when your site goes down. Monitor keeps tabs on your site and alerts you the moment downtime is detected.
Fun fact: Monitor checks your site every five minutes and notifies you as soon as a problem arises. We’ll also email you when your site is back up!
5. Make your blog a beautiful place to visit with Site Accelerator (Photon).
Photos are an incredibly important piece of the puzzle when it comes to finding success as a blogger. Compelling visuals help keep site visitors interested and engaged.
If you don’t size your photos properly though, you can seriously slow down your site. That’s where Jetpack’s Site Accelerator comes in handy. Site Accelerator (Photon) is an image acceleration and editing service. What does this mean for you? Less load time on your host and faster image loading for your readers.
Seasoned bloggers, what do you think? Which Jetpack features would you recommend to a new blogger?
Don’t have Jetpack installed yet to try out these features? If you don’t currently have Jetpack, be sure to install it so you can begin taking advantage of all the plugin’s features. The easiest way to install Jetpack is via your site’s Dashboard. Please follow these instructions to install and connect Jetpack.
At the beginning of each month, we’ll round up five of our favorite links around the internet to help you better run your business or blog in the month ahead.
Get ready for a productive November with the help of these five useful resources.
We all want to save more time when it comes to blogging, right? Emily from My Adaptable Career offers up tips to batch your tasks and get more done.
“Batching your work reduces task switching. Instead of flitting from one small task to the next, you focus on a single type of work for several hours.”
Want to improve engagement on your website? Neil Patel says you need to pay attention to your site’s design. We agree!
“Your brand’s message isn’t limited to the word choices that you make. The environment under which you present your message is equally (perhaps even more) important.”
If you’ve ever wished for the ability to have a couple more characters in your tweets, your wish is Twitter’s command! Longer tweets are here, and Buffer’s Ash Read breaks down what it all means.
“Now, @names in replies, media attachments (like photos, GIFs, videos, and polls) and quoted Tweets will no longer be counted against the valuable 140 characters that make up a tweet.”
Starting an online business is an exciting endeavor. However, it also costs money. Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Incomeshares exactly what you’ll need to consider financially if you’re looking to take the leap.
“There’s a common misconception about what it really costs to get started. Most people, including me at one point, think that it requires loads of money. I understand how that can be discouraging.”
It’s the dream, right? Turning your blog into a business and turning your blog readers into customers. Alicia Rades explains how to do just that in this ProBlogger post.
“More traffic doesn’t necessarily mean more customers. You have to be able to leverage your blog content in a way that convinces readers to trust you and buy from you.”
Have a link we should consider for next month? Drop it in the comments below!
Posted inTips & Tricks|Comments Off on Jetpack’s Picks: Five Resources for November
Tips for Managing Your Site from Your Mobile Device
Since the advent of the smartphone, it’s rare to find a website that isn’t optimized for use on mobile devices. Managing your website via your phone or tablet, however, is still a fairly new concept.
Managing your site from a mobile device makes running a business more convenient. It’s beneficial for photographers who want to upload photos from their smartphones, bloggers who are inspired by their surroundings on-the-go, ecommerce sellers who want to keep tabs on their site stats, and any other type of website owner.
Let’s take a look at a few ways you can manage your WordPress site from your mobile device, and some tips for getting the most out of your mobile experience with Jetpack.
Continue reading → Tips for Managing Your Site from Your Mobile Device