WordPress® All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 1: Exposing Your Content

In This Chapter

• Making your content easy for readers to share
• Figuring out when to interact with readers
• Using Twitter through WordPress
• Connecting Facebook to your WordPress blog

After you launch your blog, getting your content in front of an interested audience is one of the most important strategic decisions you make, and this chapter focuses on how to get your content in front of potential new readers. The idea that people will eventually find any content you write is a pretty big falsehood. You might have the best rock band in the world, but if you don't leave your garage and get your music in front of potential fans, you can't ever sell out arenas.

A lot of online vendors recommend that you drive as many eyeballs as possible to your site by using social-voting tools and other methods. Although this strategy increases your traffic numbers and may temporarily boost your confidence, it's a short-term solution. Most of your new visitors won't have a lot of interest in your content and therefore won't return to your site. There's a big difference between a reader and a visitor — readers follow your blog on a consistent basis, and visitors check out your site and then move on to the next page that grabs their attention. Use an approach in which you slowly build traffic by targeting potential readers — not just visitors.

By creating good content, making it easily shareable, and then participating within groups of interested people, you can establish ...