Once logged in, you can:
Before diving into an explanation of each post field, we also suggest you review:
Blog Article GuidelineAs a business community site, our goal is to help you help others AND make new connections with other business people. Since EVERYTHING you publish on this site is indexed by the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) taking care to publish articles that are helpful, inspiring, community focused and/or entertaining is important.
You are ALWAYS welcome to provide links in your article back to your company website, but avoid any direct sales pitch here on PortlandBusinessCommunity.com.
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Writing Your Article
The three most important fields are the Article Title, Article Text and Article Category.
Each field is noted in the attached image by the red arrows.
Article Title
When creating a title, use something that is not too long or too short, but best describes what your article is about AND why readers might be interested. Like a press release, your article title is the primary draw for the reader to take notice of your thoughts.
Article Text
While this may sound obvious, it needs to be said. Your article text MUST reflect your article title. No bait and switch is allowed. From a search engine optimization standpoint, writing a good title and then supporting the title with excellent text will get your article (and links to your website) listed on the major search engines.
Most internet users will commit about 3 to 5 minutes to an article that peeks their interest. Keep your articles between 200 and 400 words long. There is a word counter built into WordPress (located along the bottom of the page text window.
Keep your paragraphs short and easy to read.
Use bullet points where possible.
Include links to reference materials.
You should ALWAYS sign your document and include your company name and a link to your company website. If you are comfortable, you can also include your phone number.
Article Category
Your article needs to be assigned to one of the existing categories. New categories can be suggested, but only a site administrator can create new categories. If you wish to further specify the subject matter for your article, you can enter unique one to three word tags. This website is designed to use categories and tags as keywords for search engine optimization.
Make sure you use your keywords in your page text, otherwise Google, Yahoo and MSN will ignore the keyword information.
When you are article is ready, then click on PUBLISH and your article will be added to the screen for site visitors to read.
Other fields of Interest
Excerpt
A short intro for your article. Some search engines and pages on this site use the excerpt text. At the very least, we suggest you copy your first few sentences to the excerpt field.
All In One SEO Pack
If you wish to specify a page title, page description and keywords; then use these fields to enter that data.
WP to Twitter
Your messages will automatically be published on the PortlandBizComm twitter account. If you have your own Twitter account AND have entered your user name and password in your user profile here on PortlandBusinessCommunity.com, then the text you enter in the WP to Twitter field will be the text used.
The URL will be shortened using cli.gs, the WP to Twitter field will instruct you on how long your tweet message can be.
