WordPress: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition

Chapter 12: Attracting a Crowd

Now that you know how to build a fantastic WordPress site, you need to show it off to the world. That means you need to spend some serious time promoting your site.

Web promotion can be grueling work, and many WordPressers would rather avoid the subject altogether. Not only does it take a significant amount of effort, but the benefits aren’t always clear, and you often need to pursue a promotional strategy without knowing how well it’ll work. The best approach is to make web promotion as easy and natural as possible. That means weaving it into your daily routine and integrating it into the way your website works. It also means using honest promotional strategies rather than search engine ploys and other trickery. Follow the guidelines here, and you’ll still have plenty of time to pursue your real job—publishing fabulous content.

In this chapter, you’ll learn a common-sense approach to web promotion. You begin with the best type of advertising a site can have: word-of-mouth recommendations. That doesn’t mean waiting for your site to crop up in casual conversation. Instead, it involves learning how to help your readers rate, “Like,” and tweet your content through social media services such as Facebook and Twitter.

Next, you’ll help existing readers bond with your site. You’ll notify them when you publish new posts and alert them when their comments receive a reply. Done right, these steps build long-term relationships with your fans and increase the ...