Social Media for WordPress Beginner's Guide

Michael Kuhlmann

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781847199812
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Digital Marketing
• Index: Business

Fast paced, quick to read, impossible to put down, this book is a complete plan for social engagement on the web. You've heard plenty of social media success stories. You know your WordPress site inside and out, but you want help. Stop right now and pick up a copy of this book.

Social Media for WordPress

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Table of Contents

Social Media for WordPress

Credits

Foreword

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more

Why Subscribe?

Free Access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Time for action—heading

What just happened?

Pop quiz—heading

Have a go hero—heading

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code for this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Share it the Easy Way

Before you read this book

A brief overview of social media

Social media is the new Web 2.0

Going social does not mean going viral

The WordPress advantage

Doing more with core functions

The karma of pingbacks and comments

Food for thought: RSS feed basics

Time for action—building an automated newsletter with a keyword-based RSS feed

Part 1—creating a subscriber signup form

Part 2—creating a keyword-specific RSS feed

Part 3—creating an automated newsletter campaign

What just happened?

Utilizing MailChimp and Yahoo! Pipes

Partnering and building sponsorship opportunities

Exploring more applications to this tutorial

Pop quiz—understanding key terms and key concepts

Have a go hero

Summary

2. Building the Social Network: BuddyPress and WP Symposium

Before you enable the social layer

Take a measured approach to your feature rollout

Make your passion your niche market

Set aside time

Top 10 plugins to supplement your BuddyPress site

Activating BuddyPress plugins

What just happened?

The Default BuddyPress theme

The Facebook connection

Prepare for a work in progress

Easing your users into BuddyPress

Time for action—how to convert site visitors to site members

Part 1—connecting your WordPress site with Facebook

Part 2—greeting your new visitors with a warm welcome

Part 3—providing your new site visitor with incentives

What just happened?

Use your own voice

Don't overwhelm your new site members

Profiling your site members

Pop quiz—audience engagement

Gamification: The art of user-generated content

Time for action—how to get your users to create original content for you

Part 1—create a post content form with ratings

Time for action—how to enable users to share your content

Part 2—simplifying the process of sharing user reviews

What just happened?

Why post reviews and ratings matter

BuddyPress versus WP Symposium

The issue with privacy

Single and multiple developers

What can I build with WPS?

Have a go hero

Summary

3. Community Forums for the Masses

Comments versus forums

When to use comments

When to use forums

When to use support forums

Watching out for common pitfalls

Time for action—how to automatically display selective forum posts in Twitter

Part 1—setting up groups and forums for BuddyPress

Part 2—creating tweets through forum content

Part 3—automating and customizing tweets with WordPress

(Optional) Part 4—automatically deleting duplicate Twitter content

What just happened?

Keep your tweets conversational

Benefits of automating processes

Pop quiz—forum fun

WP Symposium Forums and Simple:Press

WP Symposium forums

Summary

4. VIP Memberships

Three important facets of membership sites

Customer value proposition

Timing

Time for action—how to open limited membership registrations and reward users

Part 1—setting up member-accessible content

Part 2—adding a countdown to your members options page

Part 3—rewarding your site members

What just happened?

S2 Member and CubePoints

Another foray into gamification

Pop quiz—in the VIP

Have a go hero

Summary

5. Keeping Up with the Stats

Understanding key terminology

Pageviews versus hits

Absolute unique visitors versus unique pageviews

Bounce rates and conversion rates

Creating a Google Analytics account and tracking your site

Time for action—the quick guide to implementing analytics for your site

What just happened?

Time for action—tracking a tweet to your site through Google Analytics

What just happened?

Reporting data with Google Analytics, bitly and Twitter

The gold mine of campaign tracking

Pop quiz—the quick guide to analytics

Reviewing and reporting analytics

Comparing traffic from one week to another week

Time for action—the quick guide to reading analytics

What just happened?

Analysing your site data one week at a time

Summary

6. Managing your Site

Damage control—key aspects of maintenance

When to use a dedicated server

When to upgrade WordPress and your plugins

How to manage your site users

Time for action—how to create automated daily backups for your site

What just happened?

Advantages of using Dropbox

Anticipating downtime

The upsell during downtime

Pop quiz—WordPress maintenance

Getting organized and managing time

Top ten free plugins to help you run your site efficiently

Lowering the barrier of writing

Time for action—how to write and automatically publish posts through e-mail

What just happened?

Posting through Posterous

Have a go hero

Summary

7. Beyond the Plugins Towards True Engagement

Engaging site visitors

Acknowledge

Reciprocate

Personalize

Promote

Repeat

Time for action—how to automatically tweet custom content

Part 1—Creating custom Google Alerts

Part 2—Automatically formatting your content for Twitter

Part 3—Automatically tweeting your content

What just happened?

Google Alerts and Yahoo! Pipes

Using automated tweets to supplement original tweets

Pop quiz—social media artillery

Design speaks

The essence of typography

Mobile design—ushering in a new standard

Beyond the Web

Time for action—how to create a vector-based QR code for print production

QR codes and online promotions

QR Codes and Microsoft tag

The right format for the right job

Have a go hero

Summary

A. Further Reading

Chapter 1—Share it the Easy Way

Chapter 2—Building the Social Network: BuddyPress and WP Symposium

Chapter 3—Community Forums for the Masses

Chapter 4—VIP Memberships

Chapter 5—Keeping Up with the Stats

Chapter 6—Managing your Site

Chapter 7—Beyond the Plugins Towards True Engagement

Index

Social Media for WordPress

Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this ...

Table of contents

• Social Media for WordPress