Blogs can be created for a wide variety of reasons, and if yours is a professional WordPress blog it could be beneficial to your business to add a range of plugins that have a more serious edge. We all know about rate it and poll plugins, but there is an excellent range of business tools out there as well. We have gathered up 5 of the best, and we will explain why they are the best and what you can use them for.
- Google Maps in Posts: We are going first to our friends over at WordPress.org, as we know they have a massive range of resources and guides for WordPress applications. They offer the Google Maps plugin as a download in their download area and can be found here http://WordPress.org/extend/plugins/google-maps-in-posts/. This means that posts relating to events can be mapped and specific locations shown, plus you can add a ‘home’ location for yourself should you need to. You need to be running WordPress 2.2 or higher for this plugin to work.
- Calendar: We think you are going to see a lot of WordPress.org for these plugins; we go back to them now for their calendar plugin. This is an excellent tool that means you can set up and manage your events calendar and share them with your users. It is simple to use. Have a look here at http://WordPress.org/extend/plugins/calendar/ for more information or to download it. It has all the usual calendar features, including a good range of viewing options from monthly view to viewing events by specific category.
- WP Newsletter Plugin for WordPress: A proper plugin bundle here, if you want to be able to offer your users a newsletter and be able to handle email subscribers with opt in and opt out facilities then this could be for you. You can easily set up a newsletter then download your contact list and bulk mail the letter to them. For more information visit the lovely people at SendBlaster.com where you can download all you need to get started: http://www.sendblaster.com/WordPress-newsletter-double-optin-widget/
- Business Directory Plugin: This really does what it says and provides you with a plugin that allows you to have a directory on your blog that you can either add to or invite your users to add their details to, depending on your business needs. The site offers a good range of supporting documentation and help pages, and you can find all of this and download the plug in here: http://businessdirectory.squarecompass.com/
- FAQ Builder: Another excellent business tool for your WordPress is a FAQ section meaning you can offer your clients important information that crops up regularly in a more sensibly structured way than a series of posts to the blog, which gets messy and isn’t very user friendly. The FAQ builder from Square Compass is an excellent tool that isn’t hard to get to grips with and comes from the same people as the business directory people, so again you get a good level of supporting documentation and help pages. Download the FAQ Builder here: http://faqbuilder.squarecompass.com/
Hopefully you have found at least one plugin you can use that will enhance the usability of your WordPress blog. Presenting a professional image will tell your visitors that you are serious about your blog and that you want to give them a good experience while they are visiting your site.
