Four WordPress Plugins

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Four WordPress Plugins

This post is in my Twelve Days of Christmas series.

Originally, the four "calling birds" of the Twelve Days of Christmas were actually four "colly birds" – another name for blackbirds. And the first of my four recommended WordPress plugin today is called Twitter Blackbird Pie.

1. Twitter Blackbird Pie

Sometimes you want to quote a tweet in a blog post. To make it more visual, you could post a graphic image of a screenshot in your post and link it to the URL for the individual tweet. Or you can installed Twitter Blackbird Pie and have fully embedded HTML representations of actual tweets in your blog posts in a couple of clicks. The latest version even puts a blackbird button in the toolbar of your text editor (top right).

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I used it to quote the two tweets in the post about my book launch, for example: these aren't cut-and-pased graphics – they're embedded HTML, styled in the same way as the Twitter account they're quoted from, sized to fit the post, and with fully clickable links in the tweets. It looks like this:

#bbpBox_19848955433066496{background:#C0DEED url(http://a1.twimg.com/profile_backgroun...) !important;padding:20px;}#bbpBox_19848955433066496 p.bbpTweet{background:#fff;padding:10px 12px 10px 12px !important;margin:0 !important;min-height:48px;color:#28769d !important;font-size:18px !important;line-height:22px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px}#bbpBox_19848955433066496 p.bbpTweet a {color:#759e28 !important}#bbpBox_19848955433066496 p.bbpTweet span.metadata{display:block;width:100%;clear:both;margin-top:8px !important;padding-top:12px !important;height:40px;border-top:1px solid #e6e6e6}#bbpBox_19848955433066496 p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author{line-height:19px}#bbpBox_19848955433066496 p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author img{float:left;margin:0 7px 0px 0px !important;width:38px;height:38px;padding:0 !important;border:none !important;}#bbpBox_19848955433066496 p.bbpTweet a:hover{text-decoration:underline}#bbpBox_19848955433066496 p.bbpTweet span.timestamp{font-size:12px;display:block}

On the 4th day of Christmas I'm recommending to you: Four WordPress Plugins http://bit.ly/fLtpkv 35 minutes ago via bitly [image error]getuptospeed
Jon Reed

If you ever quote tweets in your blog posts, this plugin is indispensible. I'll be using it a lot more in future.

2. Zemanta

Zemanta is a great time-saving plugin. It allows readers to re-blog extracts from your post, but its real advantage for bloggers is the editorial help it gives you in the back-end. As you write, it will automatically suggest links, images and related blog posts that you can add to your post with a single click. There are a few Zemanta-suggested related posts at the end of this post as an example.

3. Contact Form 7

A contact form is a must-have for any blog or website. Contact Form 7 does the work for you, embedding a form that people can use to get in touch with you on any page you wish.

4. Sexy Bookmarks

Add social bookmarking buttons to the end of your posts – such as 'Tweet this', 'Share on Facebook', 'Add to Delicious' and so on – with Sexy Bookmarks. Other social bookmarking button plugins are available – but this is my favourite because of the wide range of buttons available, and the nice 3D animated pop-up effect when you hover over a button. You can see it in action at the end of this post.

Find out more about blogging in Get Up to Speed with Online Marketing, Chapter 6: "Build a Blog – How to build trust, reputation and traffic".