Keeping Up When Everything Keeps Changing
WordCamp Asheville Lessons and Takeaways
WordCamp is a weekend conference held in different cities around the globe. All the conferences focus on educating people how to use WordPress — an open-source foundation for building websites. At the same time, each one is organically produced by local people. WordCamp Asheville took place last weekend (June 4–5, 2016), and 2016 WordCamp lessons came in many forms.
A still from the video from Mark’s presentation at WordCamp Asheville in 2015. Watch the video.
Mark spoke at the conference with a well-received presentation titled “You’ve Written Your Blog; Now What?” But the conference provided many opportunities to learn beyond the scheduled sessions. There were networking events, corridor conversations and a “Happiness Bar,” in which WordPress experts of all stripes made themselves available for one-on-one assistance.
WordCamp for Writers?
At Ray Access, we’re writers, not website developers. And while we built our website, rayaccess.com, with WordPress, we had a little help from our friends. In fact, our website is still in a process of evolution. But all websites are never really done. Even now, there are tweaks and content added almost every week.
Because the sessions formed four tracks, including one for all users and another for business people, we didn’t need to be a developer to get valuable tips and advice at the conference. The 2016 WordCamp lessons included:
- How to connect your WordPress website to social media
- How to integrate email marketing into your website
- Where to go for your keyword research
- How to use analytics
- Why Facebook is the gorilla in the room when you talk about social media
- How to drive traffic to your WordPress website
- How Google ranks your website
Particularly Valuable 2016 WordCamp Lessons
If you want to know what we, the writers at Ray Access, consider the most important thing we learned at WordCamp Asheville, then you’re about to be rewarded for reading this far. It doesn’t matter if you use WordPress or not; if you have a website and you blog, this information will help you.
Here’s the most effective way to blog. It’s not the easiest or the most efficient, but if you really want to drive traffic to your website, then you must follow this five-step process. It’s so cool, w’ll probably write more about it in the future. In the meantime, though, here is a trade secret.
5 Steps to Blog Effectively
These steps come from Leah Quintal of JB Media Group:
- Brainstorm your topic. Discover the questions that people — and your potential customers — are asking and address those topics.
- Do your keyword research. Find the keyword phrases that get high volume but have low competition.
- Find out if others have filled that niche. Use the chosen keyword in a Google search.
- Write your content. Finally! Don’t write your blog post until you do steps 1–3.
- Promote your blog post. You’re not done until you’ve put your words where your audience can find them.
Information from these 2016 WordCamp lessons will change the way we blog in the future. We hope they’ll help you too.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.