Why Thought Leaders Need a WordPress Blog Platform & How to Manage One
Once upon a time, numerous skilled and talented professionals with expertise could only spread their wisdom and experience in local meetings and small classrooms. The luckiest of them wrote books that frequently couldn’t reach all interested readers. Their chances of spreading knowledge globally were reasonably low.
Fast forward, we wake up in the IT era, with tablets and smartphones providing us the instant access to the internet and letting us make real-time global connections on-the-go. Practically speaking, with the use of modern technologies, the only knowledge people can’t access is the one that’s not available online.
As you can see, it’s never been easier for those with valuable knowledge and experience to share it with a broad audience and to become globally recognized thought leaders. And, one of the best ways of sharing this mastery is creating a blog. Starting a blog can bring numerous benefits not only to your readers but also to your professional reputation, by branding your name and work worldwide.
So, to get the most out of your online presence, you should carefully pick the blogging platform. And one of the safest yet simplest solutions is to set up a WordPress blog. That’s why in this post we’re explaining why you should go for the WordPress platform and how to manage it to spread your thoughts efficiently.
Why Do You Need a WordPress Blog Platform?
Having in mind that WordPress runs 35% of the Internet, there’s no wonder why it’s frequently referred to as the best blogging platform. And if you’re still not sure why you should put your trust in WordPress, read on. We’re giving you the most important perks of this platform that will help you build your online reputation in the best possible way.
#1. It will keep you focused on content creation
Owing to the easily-manageable, intuitive platform interface, you won’t need much time to set up a WordPress blog. You can access all its features from a minimalistic, well-organized dashboard and format your content in no time.
Besides, you don’t have to worry about HTML or FTP tools. That’s because you can quickly complete the entire post-related work without them, including typing and formatting tasks, files upload, image galleries creation, etc.
#2. It will provide you great placement in search results
WordPress may not transform you into an SEO expert, but it can help you make your content more visible. Various thought leadership platforms help you promote your content to the narrow audience. But you need to use your WordPress platform wisely to reach a broader audience and attract new potential readers who are interested in your niche.
To begin with, WordPress is based on an incredibly sleek and straightforward code which makes it search engine friendly. Besides, it comes with a variety of SEO plugins that help you improve your content SEO friendliness in several ways:
- Letting you define keywords and cornerstone content which enables you to improve ranking in your niche;
- Giving you hints on how to improve your content to increase visibility;
- Letting you manually create meta-data in no time, etc.
#3. It will let you create an attractive blog without messing with coding
Maybe the best thing about the visual potential of WordPress is that you don’t have to hire an expensive designer and coder to have a decent WordPress blog. You can choose among thousands of free and premium themes for different purposes that you can additionally customize with just a couple of clicks.
To increase your blog functionality, you can use both widgets and plugins that come with these themes as well as those from WordPress plugin center. You can count on analytics tools, contact and other types of forms, membership area and subscription plugins, live chat for WordPress, etc.
#4. It will let you share a diversity of multimedia content
Even though you may be focused on textual content, WordPress lets you easily share different types of posts. The platform offers a speedy, simple built-in file uploader through which you can add all kinds of media to your posts, including images, audio, and video files.
Additionally, you can also embed other websites that support this option. And this means that you can share posts from social media, Youtube, Soundcloud, and many other internet places by merely pasting the URL into its editor.
#5. It comes with an extensive knowledge base that will keep you informed
Probably no other blogging platform comes with the amount of support information that WordPress offers.
The community formed around this CMS offers ebooks, tutorials, forums, and message boards that let you find your way to the help you need. And the amount of content increases daily, providing you with the freshest news and updates.
#6. It can provide you with more than just a blog
If at some point, you realize that your online aspirations outgrow your blog, it can quickly become a part of a broader online business strategy.
Installing the WordPress platform, you get all the necessary assets to build a more comprehensive website that comprises different types of content. No matter whether you’re interested in creating a webshop, forum, webinar section, or anything else, you can upgrade your blog whenever you need.
Keys to Success: How to Manage a Blog on WordPress?
Now, that the essential advantages of WordPress blog are clear in comparison to specialized thought leadership platforms, let’s check how to run a blog on it successfully.
First, help your readers get the most out of the knowledge you share on your WordPress blog. For that, you have to plan thoroughly three essential aspects of successful blog management:
- Your publishing rhythm
- Priority sharing channel
- Interaction with readers
In this section, we’re focusing on crucial details of each element, to help you create not only great content but also a fantastic visitor experience.
#1. Establishing Publishing Rhythm
The most successful thought leader blog posts are not unplanned, no matter how spontaneous they may sound. First thing you should do is make your readers know how much content they can expect from you, and when they can read it.
To be able to create an optimal and consistent post schedule, you should focus on determining:
- Publishing Frequency: Is it going to be daily or a couple of times a week? At what time?
- Specific Type of Post Schedule: Maybe you want to blog about different topics and divide them into categories. So, it would be useful if you could pick a publishing day for a particular type of posts. This way, your visitors will know what kind of content they can expect depending on the day or part of the month.
- How to Fill the Gaps: Sometimes, you may not have enough time to prepare a post. And that’s why you may consider creating back-up posts that you can use to fill this gap, using guest posts, or think of another practical solution.
- What Visuals to Use With Your Posts: Maybe you have a photographer that can provide you with relevant images, or a designer to create animations, videos, or infographics for you? Also, you can always count on the free online image collections. It’s up to you, but it will save you time later if you determine your safe visual resources right at the beginning.
Luckily, having in mind that WordPress blogs come with the possibility of backdating and scheduling posts, you don’t have to worry about publishing time continually. In just a couple of clicks, you can quickly determine when you want your post published.
#2. Creating the Optimal Sharing System
What incredibly impacts your WordPress blog performance are the places where you share the posts. And this leads us to two important conclusions. First, you have to share your content online if you want it to be seen. Second, you have to share it on the places where your target audience is supposed to view it.
In other words, you should not waste your time and energy on sharing your post wherever you can. Instead, you should focus on one primary sharing channel and one to two secondary channels. Two major sharing channels that you have to take into consideration are:
Social media: When planning your social media strategy, one more time, you have to choose your priority social platforms instead of trying to dominate all of them. Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are the first options blogger opt for social sharing. But depending on your audience profile, you may also rely on Linkedin, Reddit, Tumblr, or another platform.
To be able to realize which social media channel works best for you, you should analyze your target audience. Try to figure out what social media they use the most when looking for the type of content you provide. Also, you should pay attention to your competitor’s choices. Getting to know their choice becomes a great indicator of what social media platforms should you choose for your niche.
Newsletter: With the use of the newsletter, you can directly share your blog posts or their summaries with your readers. However, you need to create a mailing list that receives your newsletters. For that, you should first think of strategies that will help you make your blog visitors give you their email addresses. And, there is a diversity of plugins that help you animate users to subscribe to your newsletter.
Don’t forget about your blog’s sharing features!
Another essential part of your sharing strategy is to let your readers share the content where they want to. And WordPress enables you to do this by offering a diversity of plugins that let you place the social media share button wherever you desire. You can encourage the readers to share your entire blog or its specific content such as lines, posts or pages. Also, different tools let you automatically publish your post links on social media once they’re published on your blog.
#3. Communicating With Your Blog Readers
What makes WordPress the best blog platform for thought leaders is that it lets you communicate with your audience in many ways. However, neither all bloggers are aware of the importance of this aspect for successful blog management, nor they are all familiar with the essential requirements for quality interaction.
And you should not neglect the communication management on your blog, as meaningful interaction with your readers can bring you numerous benefits. Your readers can become more interested in your content. As a result, it can lead to an increase in post engagement and loyalty, and even become your first customers in case you decide to launch an ebook or another product or service.
So, how to make your WordPress blog interaction-friendly?
When you set up a WordPress blog, you need to create an efficient, frustration-free comment section. To do so, you should either use the default WordPress comment system to set up a place for discussions or use some of the popular, reliable comment section plugins, such as Disqus.
The original WordPress discussion administration lets you decide if:
- You want to approve comments for them to show up;
- You want people to sign up for your blog content to be able to comment;
- You want to receive email notifications when you get new comments (and how often);
- You want to close comments after a certain period, etc.
With third-party solutions, you get the possibility of letting readers:
- comment using their social media accounts, thought leadership platform
- edit their comments for a while after they posted them,
- add multimedia content to their comments, etc.
Besides, you should make sure to install a spam-reducing plugin (such as Akismet), that will keep your content protected from meaningless and potentially harmful comments.
Finally, once you’ve managed the technical part of comment administration, you should also decide how frequently you will reply and what type of comments will have priority when replying. This way, you’ll be able to manage comments more time-efficiently.
Contact forms and featured email may seem helpful when your readers decide to reach out to you, but their popularity has been decreasing for a while now. So, to create a tighter bond between you and your readers, maybe you should shift to live chat for WordPress since it’s a preferred communication channel for 79% of website visitors.
The use of live chat for WordPress helps you exchange ideas and information with your audience in real-time. Plus, you get to avoid waking up to realize your email inbox is crowded with similar questions that you can’t manage to reply.
WordPress, being one of the best blog platforms for thought leaders, provides you with a diversity of live chat plugin options to help you manage your blog more efficiently. Integrating your blog with live chat for WordPress, you get a system that lets you:
- Get in touch with readers 24/7 and show that you care about their experience;
- Discuss your content and readers’ questions in real-time keeping your email unladen;
- Create canned responses to frequently asked questions, which will save you time and speed up your communication;
- Keep track of visitors’ behavior on your blog and make conclusions regarding their impressions and preferences based on their actions.
In short, once you add live chat to WordPress website, you get to:
- Reduce support emails for your brand
- Keep customers engaged with the ideation of your products
- Keep your team’s productivity all time high with multiple chat support
- Keep your customers delighted with instant support
Become a Thought Leader on the Best Blogging Platform
Set Up a Respectable WordPress Blog
As you can see, there is a diversity of benefits that make WordPress an ideal platform for thought leaders.
In the first place, it lets them stay focused on their content by offering an incredibly easily manageable interface. It helps you create a visually attractive blog that requires no coding skills. And, backs you up with practical SEO plugins along with an ever-growing support community.
But, to manage your blog in a way that lets you brand yourself as a thought leader in the global context, pay more attention to your blogging routine management.
This includes not only your content and visuals creation but also the creation of a consistent schedule; the selection and organization of priority sharing channels, as well as efficient communication with your readers.
