Once you have logged into the dashboard of your WordPress website click the Posts, Add New

  1. Type in a title [write a good one]
  2. Select a category
  3. Enter some keyword tags
  4. Add a featured image
  5. Type in or paste your blog post into the content area
  6. Enhance your post with quotes, images, pdf, presentations, audio and video
  7. Click publish or schedule the publish date

Overview of posts, tags and categories .

We don’t usually use the Visual Composer for blog posts so it won’t normally be visible as an option to enable. Blog posts tend to be reformatted and displayed in summaries and exported to facebook etc which if you had Visual Composer on an create untidy summary texts. That means, for the purposes of blog posting with are using the WordPress ‘Classic’ editor.


Let’s look at each step of blog posting in detail

1. Title

Type in a title for your blog post, keep it reasonably short and attention grabbing. The title might be the only part of the blog post that someone sees and reads so if you can make the blog post sound interesting more people are likely to read it. Aim to include the keyword you are focusing on in the blog post too.


2. Category

Tick the category that your blog post will be grouped in. If there are no categories or the ones that are there don’t seem relevant then you click the Add New Category link and type in a new category.


3. Tags

Tags are the keyword index for your blog posts. Add a few relevant tags which are between 1 and 3 keywords. Ideally you will end up with tags being reused across multiple blog posts. A tag provides readers and search engines a way to find blog posts that are related by topics within the post which are not necessarily in the same category.

When you are first starting you will need to add the tags, simply type them in the tag box and press enter. If you have been creating other blog posts and tags to re-use a tag click on the link to Choose from the most used tags and click on the tags which apply to your blog post.


4. Featured image

A featured image is usually used in a blog as a thumbnail image for summary lists of blog posts such as those found on a blog roll, recent blog posts on the homepage or category view. A featured image may sometimes show at the top of a blog post too. Think of it as an image that points to or summarises the key idea, topic or people whom the blog post is about, it is a visual title. Adding a featured image .



5. Blog post content

Type your blog post directly into the main box on the page or paste the contents in from another document. If you are going to paste information in it’s best to use the paste as plain text or paste from word insert buttons so that any unusual formatting or styles will be stripped out to maintain the consistent look of your blog.

There are a range of text formatting options on the menu bar such as bold, italic, highlight, lists and indents, a full overview of what the buttons on the menu bar [here].

Add more styling options, colours and clipart to your blog posts with Ultimate TinyMCE [here].

Make use of the keyboard shortcuts to reduce the time it takes to format text.


6. Add quotes, images, pdf, presentations, audio and video

Information in formats other than text can be used to enhance the visual appeal, ease of understanding, factual validity and enjoyment of the reader. Including a relevant image or diagram, a quote from twitter or a reference from another author or journal article increases the confidence of your reader and demonstrates that the blog post is well researched and considered.

Embed a youtube video

Adding images to blog posts

7. Publish

Click the publish button and your blog post will be live on your website.