I’m also guilty of growing bored with my theme design on about a yearly basis.  But rightfully so I believe.  Last year I paid a pretty penny for a custom site that initially I really liked, but just like anything, times change.  After a year of blogging, and watching the blogging landscape evolve, I felt the itch to update my look and feel again.  However I wasn’t interested in shelling thousands of dollars on blog that doesn’t really drive any income for me.  So I took to the web to find my next design.

This time around I had very specific wants when it came to choosing a new theme & direction to work with.  These included:

1. I wanted a theme that was a bit more minimilist.  One that focused on the content, and less on everything else.
2. I wanted a theme that was coded clean, and supported a design and features that would make the site less dependent on plugins.
3. I wanted a theme with a strong community and support so I could have access to the help I needed with customizations and technical issues.
4. I wanted to stray away from a 3rd party commenting system to improve performance, stability, and to be able to integrate the CommentLuv plugin which I also highly recommend.  CommentLuv encourages more comments through dofollow links and the ability to give commenters the option of promoting their blog links as part of the comment.

After hours of browsing, I found what I was looking for and what I believe to be one of the finest WordPress theme frameworks on the web; the Standard Theme.  The Standard Theme met all my requirements and more.  I spent a few weeks playing around with the theme on another domain, familiarizing myself with everything, and within a few days I was convinced I had made the right choice for a variety of reasons including:

1. The theme is incredibly easy to use and has a terrific admin panel that makes the entire customization process idiot proof.
2. The support and community are terrific.  It’s a thriving community and the forums have practically every answer to any question you might have.  Support is incredibly responsive and helpful as well.
3. This theme is super clean and fast.  My blog now loads much faster.
4. I’m down to only having to use 2 plugins as all my other needs are met right within the theme framework including SEO, social sharing and advertising support.

These are just a few of the great features of this theme.  They have 2 versions you can purchase the first being a $49 version that basically includes just the theme and no support/community access or upgrades, but if you seriously consider this theme, I would just go with the $99 full version. I initially purchased the $49 version, and quickly upgraded as I was thrilled with the theme and wanted the support.

I rarely dedicate an entire blog post around a product or service, and when I do, it comes highly recommended.  I anticipate using the Standard Theme for a long time to come despite any design changes I plan to incorporate.  If you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll be more then happy to answer.

Why does this matter?  Anyone that goes to the trouble of self hosting a blog typically is serious about their blogging.  Most of the successful and lasting blogs you find online are self hosted.  This is not a knock on those that do on hosted platforms like WordPress.com, Blogger or Tumblr, they do exist.  But to not include and factor self hosted blogs is a serious miss on Klout’s part.

So you might be thinking, well maybe they are, it’s just that they’re working on it.  Apparently not based on this support thread on Klout’s own site.  Besides the awful, short and careless community support responses implying nothing else is on the way, there was no official announcement or acknowledgement of this.  Double fail.

Who knows, maybe they will eventually add this in the future, but without any transparent communication around it, we’re all left to wonder.  You’d think a company centered around social media would be a bit better with communication and community.

Once I got the new job at Strategies 360, I felt the time was right.  My blog has opened up countless doors for me, so even though it does not directly make money for me, it most certainly indirectly does.  The time I’ve spent on this blog has certainly contributed to my success professionally.  I found a great designer by simply researching WordPress theme designers on Google that was priced well, and had a great portfolio.

If you’re ever considering a custom design, there are some great steps I recommend to ensure you end up getting what you really want.

1. Take the time to find a designer who’s portfolio resonates with you.  Chances are if you really like the sites they’ve designed, they possess a style that will match your likes.
2. Be VERY specific about what you want.  I actually took additional time to create a list of blogs that I loved, and what specifically I liked about them.  This cut down tremendously on the mock-up back and forth.  In fact, my designer practically nailed it on the first try.
3. Get multiple quotes from desired designers.  The business is always up and down and depending on when you hit a designer, he may be willing to take less if work is scarce, but don’t nickel and dime.  A great designer is worth every penny and too often this talent is under appreciated.

However if the price tag always seems too high, your next best bet are from resources like Themeforest.net and ElegantThemes.com, 2 of my favorite premium theme sites.

I’m happy with version 1 of my new site and would love your feedback.  I look forward to writing more and taking advantage of the new outfit.

Let’s start with the following tables.  I’ve embedded them as images since WordPress doesn’t play too nice with real tables (please, anyone with any insights on this one, do share!).  My analysis and thoughts follow.

These were the top 10 visited blog articles I wrote in the past year.  3 of these were lists (no surprise there).  Most achieved a Postrank of higher then 6, and 9 out of the 10 articles dealt with social media.  For those not familiar, Postrank is a nifty little WordPress plugin that provides some analysis into the social engagement factor of the content you create.  For more details on how they reach these measurements, see here.

In this table we have the top 10 sources of traffic including time spent on the site and bounce rate.  Based on these figures, Linked In is where I’m attracted my strongest audience followed closely by Twitter.  There’s differentiating opinion on what a good bounce rate is, but overall, mine is not where I would like it to be which means I most likely need to focus more on a specific topic.

Here’s the top 20 keywords that were used to find my site once again including time spent on the site from those searches, and the correlating bounce rates.

Based on the data above, here is what I’ve learned:

1. Use Concise & To The Point Titles – All 10 of my top blog posts in the past year have titles that were to the point.  Bottom line, make sure your readers know what you are linking to, and it’s more likely they’ll visit.

2. Stick To Writing What You Know – The bottom line is anytime I strayed away from blog articles about topics I had a relatively deep experience with, my traffic suffered.  9 of my top 10 blog articles are social media related.  It can be tempting to use your blog to rant about things, but if you are interested in building an audience, focus on a specific topic.

3. Find An Angle & Run With It – One of the most compelling things I found in my research, was around the topic of WordPress Social Media Plugins.  Based on the keyword research, it’s clear that the most impactful blogging I did was around this topic.  My bounce rates plummeted on these blog articles down to a healthy average around 50%, and these visitors spent the most time on my site.  It’s clear based on this data, that I’m providing content that resonates with those that find me through these keywords.  I should be focusing on this area more in my writing.  When you find your niche, don’t stop there, be as specific as you can.  Find ways to take those niches, and make them even more specific.  You’ll find a nice little audience waiting.

4. Be Timely – In my Olive Garden Facebook post, I wrote immediately following stumbling across the scammy offering in my news feed.  I garnered a quick audience on this post, and it was one of the most shared articles on my site.  It struck a cord with people, and I was the first (and really only) person to dedicate a blog post to it.  Of course I added a social media spin to it to make it more relevant to my blog, but at the end of the day, I drove quite a few new people to my blog and I would imagine a few new readers in the process.  This article alone still brings people to my site as shown in the keyword data above.  Of course this is not the most relevant audience as also seen in the time spent and bounce rates, but still contributes to overall traffic numbers.

5. Share Your Ah-Ha Moments – Back when the iPhone only supported one Exchange account, I was frustrated with not being able to use Exchange with both my work and Gmail accounts.  I had to dig deep to find a solution, and being frustrated with their not being an easier way to solve, I felt compelled to share my findings in a blog post.  As the data shows, I get a good % of my traffic just from this one blog post.  Now the smart thing for me would be to combine this approach with my bread and butter topic of WordPress Social Media plugins.  My guess is those would be very successful blog posts.

There’s obviously more to be learned here, but this is a start for me to try and improve my blogging approach.  Numbers are never the be all end all, so only use them to compliment other methods in measuring what works for your blog, but ensure you have free tools like Google Analytics and Post Rank set up so that you can quickly and easily get a pulse of your audience.

WordPress has changed the game and opened up the door giving the potential for anyone to create and publish great content and possibly earn a few bucks in the process.  I’ve been toying around with WordPress for years, and the formula for launching a professional grade blog is not as difficult or expensive as you would think.  Here are the 5 steps you can take today and have your professional grade blog up and running and ready to rock today.

1. Get yourself a shared hosting account.  Having access to your own web hosting is very empowering as it gives you not only the ability to launch your own custom blog, but the power to launch practically as many other blogs/websites you would ever want.  Sure, maybe your world doesn’t involve the idea of multiple blogs or websites today, but once you enter this world, you’d be surprised what you can come up with.  Once you have access to unlimited hosting, all those “ideas” you’ve had running around in your head start to seem more realistic.  I have used Bluehost for the past 5 years and stand behind them 100%.  Very inexpensive ($6.95/month), 99.9% uptime (it’s true), and all the bells and whistles you would ever need.  Plus they have an extremely easy control panel that makes installing anything idiot proof.

2. Secure your domain name.  There are hundreds of places you can go to secure a domain name.  I personally use Go Daddy.  It’s cheap, dependable, and easy to use to manage multiple domain names.  If you haven’t figured out what domain name you want, you might want to take advantage of some great research tools to figure it out. Bustaname.com is a favorite of mine to throw names at quickly and easily to see if they are available.  If you are considering purchasing aftermarket, Sedo.com and Snapnames.com are my favs for that.  Once you have your domain name, you’ll need to change the nameservers.  Steps for this vary depending on your choice of hosting and domain registrar.

3. Install WordPress.  If you chose Bluehost, or a comparable hosting company, this is as easy as launching their Simple Scripts control panel and choosing your domain name to install WordPress on.  It’s a one button install, and once this is complete, you will be given the log in info to access your fresh new blog.  WordPress is dead easy to use, but if you need some help, be sure to take a walk through on their tutorials to get familiarized with the basics.

4. Find a WordPress template.  This is one of my favorite steps in the process.  Sure you could hire a professional designer and drop $2000 on a unique design, but there are literally thousands of quality professional grade WordPress themes out there.  I’ve spent hundreds of hours looking through and staying on top of the best of the best.  My personal favorite resources are the following list of gems:

• Woo Themes – Some of the highest quality WordPress themes you will find period.
• Elegant Themes – Again, amazing designs, and the absolute craziest deal of all.  $19.99/year for access to all of the themes.  Crazy good deal.
• Themeforest.net – A theme marketplace where hundreds of designers create themes.  If you can’t find something here, you’re the pickiest of the picky.

Once you come across your must have design, simply purchase, download, and then upload through your WordPress control panel under Appearance-Themes-Install Themes.  You then have the option of uploading into your account.  Once uploaded, you can then select that theme and you will be good to go.

5. Install must have plug ins.  The beauty of the WordPress platform is the extensibility.  Plug-ins are a great way to accomplish practically anything on your blog, and again there are thousands to choose from.  Some of my must have recommendations include the following:

• All In One SEO Pack – Make it crazy easy to ensure your blog posts are SEO friendly.
• Facebook Share & Tweetmeme Button – Ensure your readers can share your content on the two most important social media platforms quickly and easily.
• Google Analytics – It’s critical to know your site’s stats.  This plugin makes it easy to integrate your Google Analytics code.
• Sexy Bookmarks – My personal fav plugin to manage all of the sharing capabilities for your readers.  This compliments the Facebook and Tweetmeme buttons usually found at the top of your blog posts while these are found at the end.

There are a few more steps along the way, but for the most part, this is your roadmap to getting started.  Of course you can have the best blog in the world, but without great content, it’s all a waste.  Pick your niche and run with it.  Everyone has their “thing”.  Stick to this and over time, you’ll find your audience.

As always, if you ever need help, or have a question, I’m more then happy to assist.  Just leave a comment, or contact me directly.

Good Luck!

So is your WordPress blog mobilized?  Mine really wasn’t.  So I took an hour or so using some incredible free tools and like magic, I’m good to go.  It’s quite easy and all you need to do is take the following steps.

1.  If you are using a hosted blog on WordPress.com, you’re already set.  If for some reason you want to deactivate the new mobile themes, instructions are located here.  For those using a self hosted blog, you can download the WPtouch plugin here, and follow the same process you do for any plugin install.  Once installed, there are a multitude of options to choose from to display your theme as you wish.

2.  Once installed, you may want to consider creating a custom icon for your new mobile theme that will also act as a potential home screen button for users who especially like your blog and are willing to devote some screen real estate.  Check out this incredibly slick and easy to use iPhone icon and favicon maker here.  Once created, you can upload this icon in the control panel for WPtouch, and when iPhone users add you to their homepage, you custom button will appear.

Both free applications are extremely impressive, especially considering they are both free.  Easy to use, and within 30 minutes, you can have your hosted or self-hosted WordPress blog completely mobile friendly.

Over the years I’ve found some very useful plugins, and lately there have been some great developments with social media plugins as well.  Below are my 9 favorite WordPress social media plugins.  If you are running a hosted WordPress blog you should definitely check these out.

1. Sexy Bookmarks – I had been using Sociable and Add To Any for awhile, but stumbled across the Sexy Bookmarks plugin and just think this one looks better.  A unique design, simple to use, and…well sexy.

2. Tweetmeme – Certainly you’ve seen plenty of blogs with retweet buttons on the top left of postings.  Chances are they are using the Tweetmeme plugin.  Easy to use, does what it’s supposed to do.  Retweet.com has recently launched offering a similar service, but I like that Tweetmeme has established themselves already with a proven service.

3. Fbshare.me – This just recently launched and mimics the functionality of Tweetmeme but for Facebook.  The facts are Twitter and Facebook are the kings of social media so having both prominently on your blog posts increases the chances that your readers will use them and spread the love.

4. Disqus Comment System – The Disqus plugin transforms your WordPress comments into a true social media friendly experience.  The plugin integrates social media mentions in addition to your blog comments which helps consolidate all the “chatter” about your blog articles into one place.  Comments load in real time, and users have multiple options regarding how to log in using any of there social media profiles.  Very cool stuff.  Oh, and did I mention it’s free?

5. Twitter Tools – The Twitter Tools plugin simply helps you be more efficient by automatically tweeting your blog posts once you publish.  It also allows you to pull your tweets into your blog posts and offers a ton of customization features to fit your needs.

6. WP Greet Box – Anytime you can give your readers the impression of a custom or personalized experience, that’s a good thing.  The WP Greet Box plugin uses Ajax to automatically identify how your users found your blog articles, and displays the appropriate referrer message at the top welcoming them and suggesting they share accordingly.

7. Fotobook -While Flickr still offers a more robust photo hosting experience, the reality is, most people are consolidating their sharing, and post the majority of their photos on Facebook.  This nifty plugin allows you to easily “import” your Facebook photos and albums into your blog seamlessly.

8. Smart YouTube – This plugin is all about making it quicker and easier for you to embed YouTube videos into your blog posts.  I’m personally more of a fan of Vimeo (check out a plugin here for them), but the fact is, most of the free world is using You Tube.  Regardless, these plugins speed things up considerably.

9. Yet Another Related Posts – While this plugin may not directly be categorized as a “social media” plugin, it’s a must have.  Social Media is all about sharing information, and when you get users to your blog, you should do all you can to share relevant information to them.  This plugin automatically identifies similar articles in your blog, and displays them as related posts.  It’s a great way to keep your readers engaged on your site and to drive down bounce rates.

Those are my favs.  What are yours?