This document provides guidelines for BYU-Hawaii ENT 383 students on improving their WordPress blogs, emphasizing the importance of personalization, proper blog setup, and engaging content. Key recommendations include using clear titles, removing placeholder content, structuring paragraphs effectively, and correctly implementing tags and categories. Additional notes cover the distinction between LinkedIn articles and updates, as well as guidelines for republishing content across platforms.

1. Improving Your Wordpress Blog
(For BYU-Hawaii ENTR 383 Students)
By Paul Wilson

2. Be Sure That Your Blog Has A
Personalized Title,
Gravatar/Logo, and Social
Media Profiles

3. Incorrect Blog Setup
Social media icons are
not pointed to the
blog accounts
Generic, None
Descriptive Blog Title
Wordpress default
Gravatar and/or logo

4. Correct Blog Setup
Gravatar
Blog name
Any social media icons you use
have to link to the account you
are using for the blog

5. Your Gravatar is setup in
your account profile,
under My Profile

6. Go to the Settings in
your Wordpress
Dashboard to edit your
site title or add a logo
Here is where you
can change the title
to your blog
If you want to
have a logo here
is where you
upload it

7. To change your social media icons go to:
Customize >> Widgets >> Social Media

8. Do Not Have Naked
URLs On Your Blog

9. This is a Naked URL

10. Naked URLs Should Be Turned Into:
Linked Text, Images, and/or Videos

11. Incorrect Way To Have Linked Text
WRONG

12. Correct Way To Have Linked Text
Correct
This is also called
Anchored Text

13. Incorrect Way To Have Images
WRONG

14. Correct Way To Have Images
Correct

15. You can get the
text to wrap
around the
image by clicking
on the image in
your Wordpress
dashboard and
select the wrap
option in the
above menu

16. Incorrect Way To Have Videos
WRONG

17. Correct Way To Have Videos
Correct
A YouTube link
should automatically
be rendered into a
video. If it doesn’t
check your video URL.

18. If you’re trying to upload a
video not supported by
Wordpress go to (+) Add and
select Media

19. Remove All Placeholder
Content on Your Blog

20. There’s nothing that
yells amateur than not
removing obvious
placeholder content

21. Additional placeholder
content can often be
found in the blog sidebar

22. You can change sidebar
content by going to:
Customize > Widgets > Sidebar

23. Wordpress will also have
Placeholder content on
your About Page, which
needs to be replaced

24. Keep Paragraphs Short
(not longer than 3 sentences)

25. Incorrect Way To Structure Your Paragraphs

26. Same
paragraph, but
broken apart at
logical topic
points.
Correct Way To Structure Your Paragraphs

27. Your Blog Post Titles Need To
Be Unique And Engaging

28. Incorrect Way To Title Your Post

29. An Okay Way To Title Your Post

30. Correct Way To Title Your Post

31. Use CoShedule To
Improve Your Titles
https://coschedule.com/headline-analyzer

32. You want to have a
70 or higher score

33. Have Secondary Titles

34. Incorrect Way To
Have A Text Post

35. Be sure to use
Heading 2
when creating
a Secondary
Title

36. Correct Way To
Have A Text Post

37. Always Have
Categories & Tags

38. Categories and tags usually appear at
the beginning or end of your post
Incorrect Way To Have A Category
Avoid at all cost having any post in
Uncategorized (it helps if you just delete this
category to make sure this doesn’t happen)

39. Categories and tags
can be found in Post
Settings when
creating a post

40. Both Tags and Categories have
dedicated pages that group
similar content together

41. Correct Way To Have A Category or Tag
Categories and Tags should focus on
having keywords that your blog identifies
with and that you would want to be
found in the search engines for

42. You Should Be Creating Your
Post For The Public, Not For
The Class Or Your Teacher

43. Never mention the class or
assignment unless it somehow is
important to the subject of the
rest of the article.

44. Other Issues You
Need To Be Aware Of

45. LinkedIn Article
vs
LinkedIn Update

46. Click here to write
a LinkedIn Article
(also known as
LinkedIn Pulse)
This is
LinkedIn’s
Home Page
Here is where you would share
the link of your blog post to your
LinkedIn feed

47. Quora blog post
vs
Quora question

48. Click here to ask a
question on Quora
Go here to create Quora blogs and
republish your Wordpress posts
This is Quora’s
Home Page

49. Your republished
sites are not titled
(mainly Tumblr)
This is many students have as
the overall title of their
Tumblr blog
WRONG

50. When republishing a post it
is critical to link back to your
original Wordpress post.

51. Avoid turning in assignments that
have links that point to your
personal dashboard, which
requires someone to login into
your account in order to see what
you’ve created

52. Make sure you create
unique titles for each
republished post

53. Be sure to have all your
SlideShare presentations
set to public and not
private

54. We’re Done