Nine Jimmy Rimmers is a year old today. I started for a mixture of reasons. Obviously the chance to mouth off about Arsenal and football. Partly it was a surrogate for a blog about the field that I work in, but couldn’t get away with writing about.
Partly it was a way of learning a bit about how the internet works. So what have I learned along the way? These are my three top tips!
1. Write about what you want, when you want.
Otherwise it becomes a chore rather than an interesting pastime. When you first hook up to Google Analytics you get a bit obsessed with the stats. I’m not saying I don’t get interested in how many visits I get and what makes it happen, but I’ve stopped getting so wound up about it.
But if you want to indulge in a little statporn, I recommend a headline such as ‘Arsenal Transfer Deal Confirmed’. On a good day it might even earn you a bandwidth warning email from your webhost. Don’t do it everyday though, Caught Offside and Bleacher Report have got that angle covered.
2. Sign up to aggregator sites
Even if you don’t go stat mad, you want to feel that someones reading, so where does the traffic come from? Mostly it will come from being on the relevant blog aggregator sites.
3. Get a mobile format for your site
Loads of blog readers are doing it 3G on their phones and tablets. If you don’t have a mobile format (or if you use high resolution pics) your site will take ages to load and people will give up.
Nine Jimmy Rimmers runs on WordPress. There are loads of articles out there on the web about how to refine a WordPress site and in particular what plugins to use.
Here are the plugins that work for me.
1. Akismet
If you are allowing comments, and it would be a dull blog without, you need something to cut down on the spam comments. This seems to do the trick.
2. Google XML Site Maps
Make your site easier for Google and the like to find your content. It’s a big world out their and you need all the help you can get. In fact, just the volume of Arsenal blogs makes a pretty big world.
3. All in one SEO
That’s Search Engine Optimisation. For the same reason as above.
4. WordPress Database Back-up
Things can go wrong, so use a plugin like this to create and email you a backup file every week.
5. Add to any
Is a plugin that puts buttons at the end of your posts to let people share them in all the common social media places.
6. Recent Posts with excerpts
This suggests other related stuff in your blog to get them interested in becoming a regular.
If you want more ideas just Google – best wordpress plugins!
