25+ Tips for WordPress Blogging Professionals

WordPress blogging means many things. It is a fanfare of juggling many hats. Even though it’s fun for the most part, it is still hard work. And just like any other job, it can easily become dull. If you’re running on fumes as far as motivation goes, here are 25+ tips to jazz up your WordPress blogging career. If you’re a beginner, you just came to the right place.

In this post, you unearth a treasure trove of the best blogging tips, meaning your WordPress blogging career is about to change for the better. Our aim is to make WordPress blogging easier and more fun for you. Yes, we want you to make money doing what you love instead of slaving away. Many others are having a great time too, such as Devesh Sharma:

I’m the founder of the WordPress blog – WPKube. I love what I do, because it helps me to make new relationships with other bloggers and allows me to experiment with plugins, themes and other WordPress-related tools. I have been working online since 2009. – As seen on WPEngine

Why wait a moment more? Pour thyself a mug and roll up your sleeves as it’s about to go down.

1. Write, and Write Some More

You write all the time. You’re a blogger and life is your canvas, with or without internet. You blog for a living. You live to blog. Even if you blog on the side, writing is every part of your life. If you want to become a great blogger, you must write.

You must blog 24/7, because writer’s block is not your mum. The longer I stay without writing, the harder it gets to write. The more I write, the easier it becomes. Really, this is the best tip you can have.

2. Breaks are Good

24/7 is an overkill. You will burn out. After all, you need to live a little to become a better writer. Take breaks away from your computer. Spend the time with friends and family. Your pet needs you too, and that side project you have been putting off for an eternity won’t start itself.

Could be your golden ticket, this side project, or one of the most remarking experiences you’ll ever have. Learn that new language, try out a new restaurant in town, go to the zoo – take a break and just live. Thank me later.

3. Learn New Stuff

Change means learning new stuff. How else will you stay ahead of the curve? Lucky for you, you learn new stuff all the time as a WordPress blogger. Come on, we all know the job involves digging deep and the internet is never short of new stuff. WordPress blogging demands you know your stuff. You need to keep learning all the time. From blogs, books, courses and life itself.

4. Build an Email List

Whether you offer WordPress blogging services or write your own blog, email marketing boosts lead generation. Capture the guys who hit the send button on your forms. Keep these guys in an email list, and build another one for the guy passing by. The money is in the list and this is no myth.

Services at your disposal include Madmimi, MailChimp, AWeber and GetAResponse. There’s Yesware too, and we are open to your suggestions.

5. One Basket, All Eggs?

You write, you get paid. It’s as simple as that. You could outsource too, but writing will happen if you need the coin. PayPal works for most people. There’s Payoneer too, who offer you up to three US Bank Accounts with their Global Payment Service. You could receive checks by mail if you like. Just don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

If PayPal acts up (like it did in my case a while ago) and your hard earned dollars can’t get into your pocket, you will sweat in them pants. Save or invest perhaps, just don’t put all your eggs in one basket. In light of this, diversify your client base too. Permanent clients who pay great prices are better than one-timers. You choose.

6. Outsource

Tried this once, and it was good for the most part. Earnings quadruple, you write more or less, and manage a team all at once. This can be a great gig if you have supervisory chops. A bad business if patience fails you. Could be a life saver if time eludes you. You could use tools such as Trello, Slack and Asana to stay on top of your team.

7. SEO

Ohhh not again. This SEO thing. Google loves well written content that plays by the rules. Google SEO guidelines demand so little of you, you should score great rankings with a plugin such as Yoast. I still rank well for a post I did back in 2013. Been using Yoast on every other blog thereafter. You could apply other SEO tricks as well, just don’t try to game the system. Google will hang you out to dry.

8. Tools, Tools, Tools

Managing other people is fun. Bossing yourself around? Not so much. You need productivity and workflow tools. You need to manage projects, clients, invoices and stuff. Think note taking, think Evernote. With tools, the more, the better, so here are WordPress resources and tools for your pleasure.

9. WordPress Blogging Niche Sites

You’ll lose your focus and motivation if you pick up one topic and drop it two minutes later. Focus on a single topic and work the hell out of it. Stick with a niche to maximize your impact. There’s power in concentrated power of will. Jump from topic to the next if you want to close your blog in six months or less. Don’t dissolve your message handling many topics at once.

10. Determine Your Target Audience

WordPress blogging is fun. It’s more fun when people get back to you, share your posts and comment on your posts. It gets better when prospects contact you and discuss budgets. But you won’t achieve this without a targeted audience. You simply can’t market to the entire world and survive your marketing spend. Focus on your readers, get to know your audience, build a strong brand and shine.

11. Get a Great WordPress Host

We cannot emphasize this enough. A great host means your business has a safe home. It means next to zero downtimes, military grade security and supersonic page speeds. When starting out, you can go with a shared host such as Siteground or Bluehost, but you’ll need to upgrade to managed WordPress hosting when your blog grows. Cheap hosts are simply a pain in the neck, and I know this first-hand.

12. Other Skills Matter Too

Adobe Photoshop skills are a great plus to have as a WordPress blogger. CSS and some HTML knowledge means you can perform basic web design tasks without hiring a designer. You will need to track your traffic and SEO performance as well. Some basic business management skills will come in handy as well. WordPress blogging is a taxing job, and the more skills you have the better.

13. Create an About Page

You need people to work with you, but who are you? After the homepage, the About page is the second most visited page. In some cases, the About page gets more views than the homepage. Would you go into business with a stranger? I bet you wouldn’t. Create a compelling About page but make it all about the prospective client.

14. Write Evergreen Content

Evergreen content will get you traffic eons after you hit the publish button. You can mix it up with hot news and deals, but remember what’s hot today won’t be hot in a week. It’s the internet, and hot stories have a short lifespan. The bulk of your content should stand the test of time as this will serve your audience for years to come.

15. Great Design

Yes, we get it that WordPress blogging is your thing and not web design. However, never underestimate the power of a great design that ensures readers get to your content easily. After all, that’s what great user experience is all about. You need a great looking and responsive design that delivers content to your readers without a hassle. Hire an experienced developer or get a great theme such as Total. You can get top notch WordPress themes in our ever expanding collection.

16. Get Personal

You are not your keyboard. You’re a person with ambitions, dreams, fears and pains. You’re not a log, you’re not your topic, you’re not alive – you’re life itself. Get through to your readers by exploiting your personality. Don’t hide behind the computer screen, we want to know what it is like to live your life.

For some zany reason, people always want to know how other people think, how other people handle their lives. Probably why blogs are so popular. Take advantage of this. Get feisty and controversial especially when it isn’t the norm. You can even use expletives if you will it, but tread carefully here sailor.

17. Headlines

WordPress blogging is many things, this we have already said. Whatever you do, you need to get the reader through the door. The door to your posts is the headline. Avoid clickbait headlines, but make yours catchy and promising. Then deliver on this promise or your blog will shrivel and die. Just Google “how to write killer headlines” and learn.

18. Be Educative

Eric of Retire29 will sell you a bridge if your primary motivation to write is to make money. If you don’t care enough about your readers, why would the readers care about your content? If WordPress blogging means a quick pay check, you’re in the wrong job. No scratch that, you have the wrong hobby. Be educative, share ideas, make somebody’s life better – be valuable. After all, there are quicker ways to make money if that’s all that interests you. WordPress blogging is a job to be enjoyed, not endured.

19. Consistency

We need to know you’re still alive and kicking. Google, too, loves a consistent blog. Blog regularly (or at least on a schedule) to keep your content fresh. I am darn sure the boss person at your workplace will be displeased if you disappear for long periods on the regular. The readers own you and you owe it to them to show up on your blog when you say you will. Create an editorial calendar and abide by it. Otherwise, they will abandon ship and you will wreck.

20. Read, Read and Read Some More

Just like writing, you need to read a whole lot of material to become a better writer. WordPress blogging is just the job title, writing is the actual work. Read a lot, or as Stephen King (you know him, right?) said:

If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write. Simple as that.

Reading is also great for personal growth, so yeah, it’s win a win situation for you, blogger. Read everything about your niche, and then some. Read fiction and non-industry material as well. Just keep reading and stop arguing about it.

21. Create an Idea Bank

The best ideas don’t come to you whilst you’re seated in front of your computer. They pop up in your head at the most unexpected places. The shower works for most people, although I preserve that time for a one-on-one with God. Unless my lady is in there with me, and I’m forced to talk about why I can’t seem to put the lid back on the shampoo. Oh the joys of life 🙂

Carry a notepad (or smartphone) and note down ideas when they pop up. Don’t kid yourself; you cannot rely on your memory. When you have a few minutes, force yourself to come up with about 10 original ideas. In no time, ideas will come to you wherever and whenever. Try it, you have nothing to lose mate.

22. Make Conversation

Why bother blogging if you just want to deliver a dictatorial speech? Don’t use words you wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole. Talk with your readers through your writing, never at them. And if and when they talk back, keep the conversation alive. Don’t isolate yourself and don’t hide behind your login page; reach out and build conversations.

23. The World Doesn’t Revolve Around You

So don’t expect everybody to hang on every word you write. I know you wear your heart on the sleeve whenever you write a blog post. It’s part of WordPress blogging. If it makes you feel better, we all have written that one post (sometimes more) that nobody gave a rat’s ass about, so yours isn’t an isolated case.

Then we have commenters from hell who, according to Eric, “…use ad hominem and hasty remarks to take up whatever pet issue they have.”

Don’t sweat such things, keep on keeping on. Best is to derive motivation from the challenge, and make your next post better. At the end of the day, the rooster will crow, the cows will come home and you will get your milk.

24. Multimedia Content

Writing is great, and can quickly become addictive. A career in WordPress blogging extends beyond killing the keyboard. Give the damn thing a break already and enrich your content with images, videos, PDFs and infographics.

You don’t even need to create your own. You can always get creative commons images, shareable videos on YouTube and amazing infographics all over the web. You can create PDFs from the content on your blog and give away the same as comprehensive guides.

Multimedia content adds life to your blog, which fosters user engagement. You don’t need me to tell you the amount of motivation you can derive from an active downloads page. All those clicks will drive you crazy, and you know you want ‘em.

25. Place Call to Action Buttons on Prominent Pages

When I started out, I was convinced all I needed was a website and a couple of blog posts to make it big in WordPress blogging. I mean, just keep writing the posts and when the readers come, some will hire you. Had everything in place – about page, services page and hire page, but boy, was I wrong or what?

Nothing happened until I read a blog post on improving conversion rates. Even with all the pages, I hadn’t made it clear I was available for hire, so no one bothered to ask although I was getting traffic to my posts.

So I replaced my homepage slider (I cringe when I remember this) with a single CTA button that made it clear I was available for hire. Guess what? The inquiries kept coming until I had more blogging work than I could handle. Several times, I even thought of taking down my hire page. And all I did was add a single CTA button. Ask the darn clients to hire you already, stupid.

26. Social Media

Woo unto you if your readers have to struggle to share your content on social media. I remember this time I was on one of those big blogs we all love reading. It’s a business blog with all kinds of great content, an active community and the works. Long story short, there were no social sharing buttons!

I found an amazing post that I wished to share with my Facebook followers and had to copy-and-paste the link. Not nice. I remember this unpleasant experience, but I don’t even remember the blog’s name. I never went back. Add social media sharing on your blog already.

Final Words

That’s all for now – 25+ tips for WordPress bloggers! There are many more WordPress blogging tips out there, but sadly, we cannot cover all of them in a single post. Perhaps I will come back with a second installation, so if we left out your favorite tips, please drop them in the comment section below.

Key takeaway from this post: Just keep writing mate. Just keep writing.