WordPress.org is really the preferred blogging platform because you host your site and have complete control.  When you first install WordPress.org, it comes as a blank slate so you are responsible for adding all the different plug-ins that add the various features and functionality onto your blog.  While, researching and playing with the various plug-ins is definitely a lot of fun, it’s also quite a bit of work and rather time consuming to go through all the available plug-ins to determine which are beneficial and which are not.

I’ve put together my personal top 10 list of my favorite plug-ins to help you optimize your blog.  Some are just basic ones but most are especially useful if you are using social media.

1.  Akismet –  This plug-in seems to not do anything visible but will protect your blog from spam comments. You need your WordPress.com API key to activate akismet. You can get it by registering at WordPress.com and by going to your profile page.

2.  Comment Luv ~ This is a plug-in that showcases commenter’s latest blog posts with a little heart icon.  It helps drive traffic back to your commenter’s’ sites and encourages more people to want to comment on your blog!

3.  Comment Re-Direct ~ You can direct first time commenter’s to a page of your choice thanking them for their support and feedback… Great for networking and relationship building.

4.  Sociable ~ This is one of many possible content sharing plug-ins that you can add to your blog posts to encourage readers to share your content on other social networking and bookmarking sites.  

5.  Tiny MCE Advanced ~ This plug-in gives you ‘Microsoft Word-like’ functionality when writing your posts.

6.  Tweetmeme ~ This is the Twitter icon you see on this post both at the beginning and at the end.  It helps visitors ‘Re-tweet’ (share your post on Twitter) your post.

7.  Viper’s Video Quicktags ~ This plug-in will help you easily embed videos onto your blog from Youtube, Viddler, and other top video sharing sites.  You definitively want to be embedding any videos otherwise you may create problems with your hosting account.

8.  What Would Seth Godin Do ~ This is a plug-in that actually cookies visitors and tracks who’s new and who’s returning.  You can then draft welcome messages accordingly.

9.  WP Related Posts ~ This is a plug-in that lists related posts below each blog post.  Very useful in encouraging your visitors to read multiple posts.

10.  WP Super Cache ~ The more plug-ins you install, the slower your blog load time will be.  So, using this plug-in will help speed up the load time of your blog.

I sure hope you found some value from this post today!  Do you have a favorite plug-in not listed here?  I’d love to hear your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment down below.  You can also use the Tweetmeme plug-in right now by clicking on the Re-tweet icon down below… Thank you!  I really appreciate it!

To Your Success!

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