As a Part Time Networker and Blogger, I'm always searching for great time saving WordPress Plugins.
You know, those wondrous WordPress blog add-ons that perform the heavy lifting for you while you're off living your life.
Since blogging is one of the primary marketing channels for my part time business, it's important for me to find ways to leverage my time and energy whenever possible.
The following WordPress Plugins will help you automate various aspects of your blog, allowing you to spend more time on brainstorming ideas and writing your posts.
My 7 Essential Time Saving WordPress Plugins
Time Saving WordPress Plugin #1: What Would Seth Godin Do?
If you could find someone to greet your first time and returning visitors each time they came to your blog, and that person would do it for free, would you jump at the opportunity?
Of course!
Well, that's essentially what the What Would Seth Godin Do plugin does.
It uses cookies to distinguish between first time and returning visitors to your blog and allows you to write a customized message displayed right above your post.
You can thank them for visiting, remind them to subscribe to your RSS feed or invite them to pick up your free giveaway.
It's like having your own personal Welcoming Committee for your blog.
What a great way to welcome your blog visitors and, after a simple initial setup, it will cost you no time at all.
Time Saving WordPress Plugin #2: SEOPressor
Learning the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important for any marketer and if you want your blog posts to rank high in the search engines for your important keywords, you'd better have at least a working knowledge of SEO.
Having said that, there's a really cool Plugin called SEOPressor that virtually leads you through the process of optimizing your blog post for the search engines, one step at a time.
It essentially puts your blog on page SEO on autopilot.
The SEOPressor “scorecard” appears to the right of every post, letting you know how you're doing in your SEO efforts. It can't be much simpler than this!
One word of caution – you cannot use this plugin as a substitute for learning basic SEO (you still need to know what you're doing), but it sure is a huge time saver.
SEOPressor is not a free Plugin, but the time it saves you more than makes up for the nominal cost.
Time Saving WordPress Plugin #3: Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
This nifty plugin generates a list of related posts and displays them at the end of your blog post and in your RSS feed.
Why does this save time? Two reasons.
- First, there's no need to go searching for related posts to suggest to your readers. This plugin does it for you automatically.
- Second, it's good practice to interlink your blog posts, both for SEO purposes and to entice your reader to dive deeper into your blog. You can use the list generated by this plugin as a great start to finding posts to interconnect.
Time Saving WordPress Plugin #4: Digg Digg
Now that you've saved time in writing and formatting your blog posts, it's time to promote it!
Social media is a great place to start, and Digg Digg is a time-saving plugin for sharing your post on the social sites.
Digg Digg integrates up to 17 social media buttons onto your site and allows you to place selected buttons on different areas of your blog.
For example, you can place social media share buttons on the top or bottom of each post or page. You can also use a floating sidebar that follows your reader as they scroll down your post.
I've found the floating sidebar option to be very useful in allowing my readers to share my content.
Digg Digg is a highly flexible and customizable social media share plugin that will save you much time and energy when it comes to promoting your post on the social sites.
Time Saving WordPress Plugin #5: MBP Ping Optimizer
Pinging is the process of letting the Internet World know that you've added new content to your blog. It's done automatically by most WordPress blog themes, but because it pings each time you publish or edit your post, you could get banned for excessive pinging of the same post.
The free MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer Plugin corrects this problem.
Using this plugin, pinging sites are only notified when your blog post is published the first time, not each time you edit it. Thus, it removes the threat of getting banned for excessive pinging.
Even better, pinging is done automatically and requires no effort on my part. I can rest assured knowing that when I hit the PUBLISH button, the world is notified!
Time Saving WordPress Plugin #6: MBP Subscriber Magnet
Blogs are great for sharing ideas and knowledge, but they're also a great tool for building a marketing list of potential prospects.
How do you go about doing this?
Most commonly, a sign up box (opt in box) is placed on your blog, asking your readers to provide their name and email (or just email) in exchange for sending them a free giveaway.
This giveaway may be a free newsletter, Ebook, crash course, or other “ethical bribes”.
The MaxBlogPress Subscriber Magnet Plugin specializes in helping bloggers maximize their list building capabilities. It allows for the use of your sign up box in various ways and locations on your blog: On the sidebar, the footer, after blog posts, and in the comments section.
You can also use a highly customizable popup advertising your free offer if you choose to do so.
I have recently purchased this plugin and it quickly became a favorite time-leveraging tool. As I test out the various functions of the plugin, I will be writing a review with my recommendations for optimal use.
Time Saving WordPress Plugin #7: WordPress Backup
Now that you've put so much time and effort in to your blog, how horrible would it be to lose all your files? It would be disastrous, and it's happened.
It's something I don't want to worry about.
Backing up a blog used to mean manually copying files from your blog to an external source for safe keeping. It took time and it was tedious.
Now, plugins do it automatically and two of the best I've found are WordPress Backup (by BTE) and WordPress Database Backup.
You need both because they perform different functions:
- WordPress Backup by BTE performs a backup of the upload directory (images), current theme directory, and plugins directory to a zip file, which can be sent directly to your email
- WordPress Database Backup performs on-demand backup of your WordPress database.
What a huge time saver!
There you have it — the 7 Time Saving WordPress Plugins that serve to automate many aspects of my blog function and allow me to concentrate on the most important part of blogging – creating valuable content and building a relationship with my readers. These behind-the-scenes workhorses are important for any blogger, but even more so when one is blogging part-time.
DISCLOSURE: I am proud to offer affiliate links to the SEOPressor and MaxBlogPress Subscriber Magnet Plugins.
Now It's Your Turn!
What time saving plugins are essential to you — the ones you can't do without?
LEAVE A COMMENT and join in the discussion!
49 replies to "7 Essential Time Saving WordPress Plugins For The Part Time Blogger"
Having a WordPress backup is definitely a great tool. I would love to know the URL for this plugin!
Hi Jen,
Here is the WP Backup plugin I use –> http://www.blogtrafficexchange.com/wordpress-backup/
Another good one is Wp-DB Backup –> http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/
Hope this helps!
I always love to peer over the shoulders of fellow marketers to find out what plugins they use!! I am pleased to say I have most of these including SEOPressor, but I did not have the Ping optimizer, so I hope I am not too late with installing it. Do you thing the Ping networks ever let you back in? I update my posts about 10 times!! LOL
Also liked Oliver’s comment reply plugin too as I had been looking for one that did this and I much prefer to hear a testimonial before installing.
Great post – I think I have to do a review for the Ping optimizer now, so may also list my favourite plugins too!
HI Nicky,
I have had no problems with the Ping Optimizer plugin and would love to read your review. I have had some problems recently with the new version of SEOPressor. It seems to not like my theme very much. I have my developer looking at it, so we’ll see how that plays out.
Thanks for your comment!
I have done one Bob and referenced you in it too:
http://diamondmlmtraining.com/seo/best-wordpress-plugin-if-you-are-prone-to-blog-bloopers/
This is a very great blog.. I really love to hear from the expert! Thanks for sharing this great info!
You’re welcome, Sally…. thanks for commenting!
Bob,
Great list of plugins!
I would like to add one plugin to the list, which I find to be helpful – Duplicate Post.
I’m publishing certain type of content on certain days (like video tips on Fridays) and I’m using a same blog post template for my posts every time (same post image, same structure on my posts …).
What duplicate post does is that it copies the old post to a draft and then I can modify the draft and publish it as a new post when I have finished editing the draft.
It’s a simple plugin, but when you have recurring posts, I find this to be a time saver. It eliminates the manual copy/paste operation of an old post to new one – something I was doing earlier.
Timo
This is a great tip, Timo… I haven’t heard of it, but it makes perfect sense if you are using this tactic.
Appreciate your contributions here, Timo!
I would definitely recommend the backup plug-in. It is very helpful in case something happens.
I agree, Jan.
Thanks for the comment!
Time flies so fast, therefore, if one wants to save time it is important that one considers the above-mentioned plugins. They would be very helpful for them for sure.
These plugins have helped us save so much time blogging, it’s nothing short of amazing. I’m a huge fan of productivity plugins… but one must be careful that you don’t add so many plugins that they cut down on the loading speed of your blog. If your blog takes a long time to load up, you’ll undoubtedly lose visitors before they have a chance to read your awesome content! 🙂
@Bob RE
that’s interesting. you didnt mention twitter as your traffic source (I believe twitter is a best tool to promote a blog or was:)) 4000 twitter subscribers comparing with 200 facebook fans..and facebook holds the top.
you are absolutely right – Google Analytics definitely helps to identify traffic sources it is just really strange for me that people still use services like Digg I thinks almost everyone’s hooked up on facebook)
I guess everyone has a favorite traffic source and social media outlet. For me, it’s FB.
I agree you can get many more followers on Twitter. I just seem to get better engagement on Facebook. As I said, everyone has their personal favorite!
Glad you’re using Analytics to track your results. i don’t understand how you can’t use this or something similar to see what’s working!
Appreciate your addition to the discussion!
instead of Digg and other soc. networks I would probably recommend only twitter, facebook – these are the top sites people use
I guess everyone has their favorites. I think it’s important to check your analytics to see where your traffic is coming from and, more important where you conversions lie.
I get a lot of my blog traffic from Facebook and Stumbleupon, but most of my conversions (opt ins and sales) come from Facebook.
Thanks for sharing.
Bob,
I also like the onlywire plugin – I use the free version of onlywire and this plugin gets your new posts bookmarked to 40+ sites in 1 go
Onlywire is also great Brigitte… thanks for adding it to our list.
Appreciate the comment, Brigitte.
I also like to use the ‘all in one seo’ plugin – a good free version of the seo pressor one
Well, the two plugins are not interchangeable, but complimentary. They do different things. In fact, I use both the All-in-one SEO plugin AND the SEOpressor plugin.
Thanks for your comment.
Time is money when it comes to blogging. These plugins look great, but there’s so many! Which out of these 7 would you recommend that are “must haves”?
Thank you for this article. Trying to find some plugins and came across your site. Do you think it’s possible to have TOO many plugins? I see above that it can slow down the blog and patience is something we all lack these days.
Hi Uri,
First, welcome to our blog! Great to have you here.
And to answer your question, YES you can have too many plugins. The danger here is that some of the plugins will slow down your blog’s loading time, and that can be a really bad thing for impatient people! 🙁
The best thing to do is to add the plugins one by one and then test your blog’s loading speed at places like http://pingdom.com. (get a free account).
I hope this answers your question, Uri. We’re looking to seeing you again!
Hi Bob,
I enjoy reading post like this. It introduces plugins that I wasn’t aware of. There are so many. I’m very careful when it comes to installing plugins.
Have a great day…
Josh
Hey Josh,
You’re right… plugins can be great leveraging tools but you need to be careful that they don’t slow down your blog and hinder it’s performance. A slow blog makes for few visitors, since no one wants to wait around for it to load (at least I don’t).
Thanks for your comment, Josh. Hope to see you again soon!
Hey Bob and Rosemary. I’m finding more tips from you guys about managing my time more efficiently. Thanks for your help and getting me into the right direction. How long have you two been blogging?
Hi Dr Bob,
Thank you for putting this list together. It’s funny that I haven’t configured Digg Digg properly yet, so thank you for reminding me. (I’m still figuring out how the floating display would work using my free WP theme). I have also heard a lot of great feedback about SEOPressor. I can see how it’s working very well for your blog (wow for the current stats! :-)) Well, I don’t have MaxBlogPress Subscriber Magnet too yet. I am sure these will be great additions to my many plugins. I’ll definitely review and eliminate some of the unnecessary ones to make room for these great recommendations from you.
Thanks again, Bob for sharing your most favorite plugins!
– Rowena
Hi Rowena,
You make a great point. New awesome plugins are being made every single day. As you review them and decide to install them on your blog, it pays to periodically go through your plugins and get rid of redundancy. After all, keeping plugins running that are no longer needed may just slow down your blog, and Google — and your readers — will hate you for it! 🙂
Thanks for the great comment, Rowena. Great to see you over here again!
Bob,
I’m already using most of the plugins you listed here except that SEO Prossesor. I keeping hearing good things about seo prossesor. Defiantly going to try it in near future.
Hi Dev,
I find SEOPressor quite useful as a reminder or checklist to optimize my posts. I already know most of the SEO tactics it uses in it’s formula, but it’s a great way to be reminded. And for the novice, I would think that this plugin would be invaluable.
Thanks for your insights, Dev. Great to see you here again!
The ping ban is banned from the ping sites, not from Google, isn’t that right?
That’s right Dennis… banning would be from the pinging sites, not Google. Thanks for bringing this point of clarification to our readers!
Great to see you here again, my friend!
I love that there is a “what would Seth Godin do?” plugin! That is awesome. These all sound great!
The ones that stand out to me are the SEO plugin, because I am hip deep in trying to figure out how to optimize my blog and feedback from the plugin would be ever-so-helpful, and the backup plugin, because as someone who uses Blogger, when it had its blackout a couple of weeks ago, I lost two posts (one of which had comments) and I never got them back.
Hi Jeanine… What would Seth Godin do? Cool, huh?
The SEO plugin is great for newbies or SEO intermediates because basically it provides you with a checklist of what needs to be done to optimize your post. I find it very helpful.
And I agree about the Backup plugins… I never want to be faced with the disaster of losing all the content off my blog. I’ve heard horror stories — thankfully, it’s never actually happened to me, but I want to be proactive here!
Thanks for your insights, Jeanine. It’s always a pleasure to see your smiling face!
Yes, those are some options you can chose that will save you time and make your blogging easier. In particular MBP Ping Optimizer actually, since it saves us from being banned by Google.
Hi Catarina,
I agree, Ping Optimizer helps keep you in Google’s good graces. Most bloggers don’t know that the default settings on WordPress set them up for a possible ban from Google, since it pings your post when it’s published AND whenever their are revisions or edits. This can be perceived by Google or other search engines as submission of duplicate content.
Thankfully, the guys over at MBP took care of this issue with their Ping Optimizer plugin.
Thanks for stopping by!
Hey Bob,
Plugins I must confess make life so much easier with wordpress.
Interestingly I use most of the ones on your list, and the ones I dont use I have plugins that perform the same function.
Those who dont have them NEED to install them.
Thanks for the valuable resource.
~Tosin
Hi Tosin,
Plugins are a great leveraging tool, no doubt about it. They are so simple to install and make a bloggers life so much easier. For the part time blogger or networker, this kind of leverage is a must!
Appreciate the feedback, Tosin. Thanks for stopping by!
Hey Bob,
Very good list of useful plugins. I am recently hearing a lot about the SEOPressor. Gotta give it a shot sometime next month. BTW, the related posts plugin is a great and handfree way to increase reader engagement. When your visitor finishes reading your post, a bunch of related posts in the end is a great way to direct your readers to a next venue on your blog.
Cheers,
Jane.
Hi Jane,
I love the Related Posts plugin, too! You’re right — it give the reader an obvious place to keep reading. And I also use it as a suggestion tool when I’m looking to internally link my posts at the writing stage. Works well for that, too.
I like SEOPressor but it does have it’s limitations. If you do everything it suggests in the tool, there are times when it would seem a bit contrived for the reader. So, like anything else you take what you like and leave the rest 🙂
Thanks for stopping by, Jane!
Hi Bob,
These are all great plugins, though I have not tried the subscriber magnet. It sounds like something that I need! I have been wanting to use something like that without using a popup.
Thanks,
Stacy
Hi Dr Clarke,
Thanks for sharing these plugins. They are my personal favourites too 🙂
Set, forget and improve the functionality of your blog!
All the best,
Mavis
Hi Bob,
thanks for sharing your favourite plugins. I don’t consider myself a plugin junkie, but nevertheless, I have 44 of them installed on my blog, lol.
One of my favourite ones is Comment Reply Notification: Everytime I reply to a comment, the author of the comment gets an e-email with my reply. A great tool to show people that you’re following up with comments.
Take care
Oliver
I used to be a part time bloggers. Plugin number 2 (SEOPressor) and 4 (Digg Digg) were very useful. It saved lots of time. Keep up the spirit!
I’ll run seopressor by my outsource ans see what she thinks. 🙂
Hi Bob,
Great post! Thanks for sharing. I really like seopressor and the Subscribers Magnet because it can really save you time (leverage) and it can and proven to increase your conversion and it works! Thanks again.
~Sonny
Hi Sonny,
Yes, that’s been my experience at well with these two plugins. Both have saved me time and, ultimately (even though they are paid plugins)… money!
Thanks for stopping by, Sonny! Great to see you here again.
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