A question I often get asked is this one. “What do I need on my blog?” I can understand why people would ask it. Truth is, there isn’t one answer that will fit everybody, which is why this article may or may not be of help to you. What I’m going to try to do is give you some examples of things you might want to put on your blog that are pretty common to most. There will always be exceptions…..

For starters, you have to sit down and think about what purpose your blog is going to serve. Is it going to simply be a site filled with information on a particular subject where visitors can get educated? Is it going to be a photo blog? Is it going to be one where you want your visitors to interact with you and the rest of the community? Do you want to show movies on your blog? Are you going to use it to make sales or collect leads? As you can see, just from these few things alone, there are many little widgets you can put on your blog to make it effective.

For the sake of conformity, I’m going to assume that you’re planning on using a WordPress blog. WordPress probably has more plugins and widgets than any other platform in existence. There is almost nothing you can’t do with a WordPress blog. But what? That’s the question.

Well, if you’re planning on capturing leads and following up with them in order to make sales, you’re going to want to put an opt in form on your blog. Ironically, WordPress does NOT have a plugin for opt in forms, one of the most common things that Internet marketers use. Therefore, you’re at the mercy of the autoresponder service that you use for the code to place the form on your blog. I find that the Aweber web form is good enough, though some people don’t like it very much. There are other solutions but the good ones cost a pretty penny.

What if you’re concerned about spam? Like it or not, once the spammers get wind of your new blog, they’re going to be coming after it like a bat out of marketing hell. Well, one great way to keep spam at bay is to use a plugin like Akismet. What this does is it displays a captcha so that the “person” trying to post the comment will have to actually verify that they’re a live human being. Now granted, some of these spam bots are pretty smart and can get around this. However, Akismet will take care of most of your spam problems.

I could keep going but I think you get the idea. What you need to do is sit down and figure out what it is you actually want your blog to do. Then, just head over to Google and type in WordPress plugin for, and then whatever it is you’re looking for. If it exists, it’ll come up.

Like I said, there is no one answer to the question, “What do I need on my blog?” But if you go through your own personal list of “wants” you should have no trouble coming up with all the plugins that you need.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim
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