It’s the start of a new year, and what better time to start fresh with a new blog, and put in some of our favourite plugins!

In the past 5 and a half years, I’ve installed WordPress more times than I care to remember. Since 2004 it’s been my platform of choice for blogs, and in the past year or so, it’s become perfect for small-scale websites.

A large reason behind this is the plugins. Anyone can whip up a plugin that taps into pretty much any of the built-in features of WordPress, to make an already brilliant platform that little bit better.

Theres a handful of plugins that I couldn’t work without, going from behind-the-scenes of WordPress to sidebar widgets:

WP Dummy Content

By Zvi Band – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-dummy-content/

WP Dummy Content

When you’re working on a WordPress theme, the last thing you want to do is spend 20 minutes making a bunch of pages to fill the menu, and enough posts to make your page numbers show up. Even then, there’s only so much Lorem Ipsum you can use.

This plugin gives you as many posts/pages/sub pages as you want, with paragraphs, lists, quotes etc. So you can style everything as you need, then just hit the “Delete them all” button when you’re finished!

Page Lists Plus

By Tim Holt – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/page-lists-plus/

Page Lists Plus

This plugin is so powerful, it’s hard to sum it up in a couple of paragraphs. In a nutshell, it overrides the wp_list_pages function, adding heaps of new features, like

• Changing the title text of your menu links from the default of the page title
• Open certain links in new windows
• Redirects (ie. Links to external sites in the header)
• Include (my personal favourite, removes pages from the list)

There’s also a ton of options for the list as a whole, such as adding span tags around links (perfect for weird background images), adding a ‘home’ link to the start of the list, unlinking the current page, and heaps more.

Twitter For WordPress

By Ricardo González – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-for-wordpress/

Every man and his dog (well, just about) uses Twitter, and with over 200 websites using WordPress, there’s some overlap.

There’s a ton of different ways to integrate twitter into your blog, but Twitter for WordPress gets my vote. Automatic @reply recognition, URL hyperlinking and email linking are options, and it can be used as a widget, or by a call to twitter_list_messages(); in your template code if you want it somewhere different.
I love this plugin so much, I’ve been working on a modified version that supports twitter lists…

Widon’t 2.1

By Shaun Inman – http://www.shauninman.com/archive/2006/12/05/widont_2_wordpress_plugin

The effects of this plugin probably go largely unnoticed by a large portion of people, but the few that notice it will love it.

It removes ‘widows’ (a word by itself on a line) from page titles (and any other specified tag), by adding a none-breaking space between the penultimate and last words.

Simple Flickr Photos

By Onur Kocatas – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-flickr-plugin/

Simple Flickr Photos

This one does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s simple, and it shows Flickr Photos. My only disappointment with this plugin is that you have to know your Flickr user ID (idgettr solves that issue though). Aside from that, It’s simple, but has a load of options (user photos, group photos, tagged photos etc). You can see it in action at the AFLPA Blog.

WP-PageNavi

By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-pagenavi/

Before

After

Out of the box, WordPress adds ‘next’ and ‘previous’ links to blog pages. While this is useful, some people want a little more control. That’s where this plugin comes into play. It adds page numbers to your archive pages, and in the case of a lot of themes (such as those from WooThemes), there’s ‘plug-and play’ support for it.

Obviously there are a lot more useful plugins, but these are the main ones that I use with any fresh WP installation.

Which plugins can’t you live without?

This Web2.0 space is bursting with growth and it’s only ever increasing. The numbers below highlight to all businesses how much opportunity is out there on the web right now! Stop crying and start working harder in this space! 2009 for small business owners has never been so great! 

Hold onto your hats and fasten your seat belts!

Internet

1,596,270,108 people are actively using the internet (Internet Usage and World Population Statistics are for March 31, 2009)

Google

 1 trillion URL’s are indexed on Google –  Source 

Here is how Google grew in terms of number of indexed URLs :

1998 : 26,000,000 (26 million web pages)
2000 : 1,000,000,000 (1 Billion web pages)
2008 : 1,000,000,000,000 (1 Trillion web pages)

Google has done 2 billion searches a day, or about 700 billion a year Source

Top 100 google hot trends - http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends

Blogs

133,000,000 - is the number of blogs Technorati has indexed since 2002

A new blog is created every second, totalling 80,000 new blogs every day. 

900,000 blog posts are created daily

Blogging grew 68% in 2008

346 million people worldwide read blogs

77% of active web users read blogs

The average blogger in the US:

• 51% male 
• Aged 35+ (58%)
• Aged 18-34 (42%)
• College educated, 74%   Source

Twitter

Number of tweets as of right now! - 1,691,543, 819 - ( click here for an up to the minute count)

At the start of 2008 Twitter had only around 500,000 monthly visitors

Growth rate for Twitter was 752%, for a total of 4.43 million unique visitors in December 2008  Source

Twitter.com is a top 500 site that reaches over 4.1 million U.S. monthly people. The site attracts a more educated, slightly more female than male, young adult audience. Quantcast, March

Twitter is receiving 8million unique visitors in the month of March 2009.Compete (via Nick) March 10

 Melbourne’s top 100 twitter users

Facebook

• More than 200 million active users

• More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day

• More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college

• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older

• More than 20 million users update their statuses at least once each day

• More than 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week

• There are more than 30 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.

• http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

• Inside Facebook says: “the number of Americans over 35, 45, and 55 on Facebook is growing fast. In the last 60 days alone, the number of people over 35 has nearly doubled. Developers and marketers may want to think about how to serve this group of new users.” Inside Facebook, March

• “Women over 55 remain the fastest growing group, and growth among the teen and college-age set has been relatively paltry. In absolute numbers there are now even slightly more members between the ages of 45 and 65 than there are 13-to 17-year-olds.” Wired Magazine, March.

YouTube

You tube nears 5 billion views Source

 Average internet users watch 2 YouTube videos a day

The average video length, according to comScore.com, was 2.7 minutes.

YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. 

One of the most watched videos on youtube in 2009 – set to break youtube records! 

This illustrates how web clips are mixing with TV shows and bringing in a bigger audience. 

Mobile usage

63 million on mobile internet daily

Significant growth in the numbers of people accessing the internet from their mobile phones vs. a year ago. The company says that today there are just over 63 million mobile web users in the US and 35 percent of them are online via their handset daily. Source.

I trust your mind had been sparking off like a new years eve fireworks show! Here are the numbers, now where are you seeing the opportunities within your own business?

I’m in England right now – God save the Queen…and all that Jazz!  (If you are curious to know why – then click here – Sam’s youtube video  ).

Any how, I have many friends in the UK that own their own businesses, from small business start ups to companies increasingly expanding. Now, I must say, if I’m passionate about something and know it works then you can’t shut me up….I’ve been told I can be a little full on at times! FULL ON…come on…..if you’re passionate about something and know it works then why not share, especially if you know it’s going to boost their business and gain them more exposure!

Right now,  one of the strategies I am utilising with my clients (to gain exposure and push them up the Google rankings) involves blogging. I luuurve da blog –   INNIT!  (said in a cockney London accent!).

Why???? Well, I’ll go into that on my next post, yet firstly I’m guessing some of you may not know what a blog is, so I will break it down.

What is a business blog?

A business blog is also known as a web blog. It’s basically a journal with software that is installed into your computer.  It has a content management system (a system where you can control the content) and uses a data base and a scripting language….blah blah. Yet, the main feature of a blog is that YOU can contribute messages (posts) into this and have full control over it. POWER TO THE PEOPLE – AKA – WEB 2.0!

A blog is like a website yet far more powerful (in my eyes) as it’s interactive and engaging (Web2.0), that’s if your website hasn’t been all web2.0ed up yet!

Your business blog is like a diary. It can contain tips about your products, success stories about your clients, quality information about what your target market would like to read, who is in your team (a personal version from the heart..with pictures or video) etc.  It’s you – you are your brand! Remember, you are helping people and engaging them in the conversation, you are giving them previews of what’s new and what’s coming up – there are so many exciting things a business blog can write about. I’m going to burst!

So why blog?

As mentioned above, a lot of my friends run businesses, and the usual questions they ask  me are :  “what shall I do to increase traffic to my business web site” and  “what shall I do to let people know my business exists” “how can I sell more  and position myself as an expert, whilst banding  myself”, to name just a few! My first answer..honestly…  START A BLOG!!!!

So, why am I so aweeeeeeeeeeeeeeee  about  blogging?

Ok, think about a normal website for a sec, (static website) that has not been web2.0ed up…by us  :-) ! It’s pretty much like a brochure, wouldn’t you agree? So many websites we upgrade are like printed brochures in an online form (web 1.0). BORING! There are usually a few pages that describe what the business does, how they do it and their vision/mission along with the services they provide. The language is usually in marketing speak; you know the ones, right? Can I be honest and straight to the point?  People get bored and distracted by this; they’re more interested in how you can help them (what’s in it for them), how can you relieve their pain! Or fulfil their pleasure!

Think about this..then read our “Why blog?” and “How to blog for business success” in the next coming blog posts – be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out!

If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave comments below (you can leave comments by clicking the comments link under the tweet this link) – I can assure you I will get back to you in the shake of a lambs tail …or something like that!  (Also share this on facebook and/or tweet it)  if you believe it’s a great post using the buttons below!) I will be tracking these!  :-) Whoop whoop!