Wordpress Editorial Calendar

Issue #871 Nov. 22, 2014
Publisher: Joan Stewart

“Tips, Tricks and Tools for Free Publicity”

In This Issue

WordPress Editorial Calendar
Facebook App for Groups
Looking for an Old Tip?
Hound Video of the Week

This Weekend in the Hound House:

Thanks to Publicity Hound Judith Allee for letting me know about Auclair Windblog Fleece Gloves from the Sierra Trading Post. Publicity Hound Andrea Densley recommends The Warming Store, with products by Gerbings. “These are electrically heated apparel items with small specially designed batteries, or they can be worn and attached to a motorcycle battery when riding. Pretty pricey, but very warm.” Dear Santa…

1. WordPress Editorial Calendar

Ever kick yourself because you made a mental note to blog about an event and then, days later, looked at your calendar and realized you missed your chance?

Serious bloggers use editorial calendars as reminders about what they want to write.

WordPress has an Editorial Calendar plugin that gives you an overview of your blog and when each post will be published. You can drag and drop to move posts, edit posts right in the calendar, and manage your entire blog using this one free too.

There’s even a Google group devoted discussing it.

2. Faceboook App for Groups

Participating in Facebook Groups can help promote your expertise. But if you’re using a mobile device, posting to Groups has been hassle.

This week, Facebook launched the Facebook Groups app to help you participate more easily. It’s available for iOS and Android devices and makes accessing groups faster and more visually pleasing.

If you’re a power user who checks multiple Groups every day, you’ll save a lot of time. The most useful new feature is the ability to create a shortcut on your smart phone for an individual Group.

Read CNN’s article about the new Facebook Groups app.

3. Looking for an Old Tip?

Repurposing content by creating it in different formats makes content marketing so much easier, and it can expose a new audience to your expertise.

A few months ago, I started a little experiment on Pinterest. Using PowerPoint, I created pins for Pinterest that show the topics mentioned in each issue of this newsletter. I’m pinning them all to my board titled “The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week Ezine.”

The next time you’re looking for an old tip you remembered seeing here, the easy way to find it is to hop over to that board. Unlike the publicity tips archives, you don’t have to keep clicking back and forth to find what you want. You can scan all the pins on one board until you find the topic you’re looking for. Click on the pin, click again and you’ll end up back in the archives, looking at the issue you need.

If you publish email tips or a newsletter that you archive, steal this idea. I’ve only been doing it for a few months and already more than 1,800 people follow that board–and some are even repinning! Be sure to use a few hashtags within each pin description.

Here’s the very best part. I handed off this entire project to my assistant, Christine Buffaloe of Serenity Virtual Assistant Services. I don’t touch it.

Hashtags can be confusing if you don’t know what you’re doing. I removed the mystery for you during the paid webinar I hosted earlier this year on “How to Use Hashtags: The New Search Tool.” It includes the three mistakes that will render your hashtag useless, examples of how you can use hashtags to fill seats at events, and tips for creating a branded hashtag for your business.

4. Hound Video of the Week

Thanks to Publicity Hound Sunny Cook of Asheville, N.C. for this American Greetings birthday card of The Three Old Tenors singing about getting old. Your friends will howl when they see this. I couldn’t stop playing it over and over and singing along.