Valuable blog content is a mainstay for today’s businesses. Many have turned to blogs as a solution to better their arsenal of communications, including newsletters, press releases, and collaborating with potential clients.
But is blogging a powerful tool for communicating your business stories?
When well integrated with PR (public relations), blogging can help create compelling business stories. And best of all, it attracts new clients, forges trusted relationships with existing ones, and even builds tight bonds with the media contacts in your space.
Naturally, PR pros make exceptional storytellers. That’s because, as seen above, their writing involves much more than just sending email pitches and press releases. And their writing style is also less sales-y (as is the norm with marketing writing.)
But crafting messages that draw people in won’t cut it if your blog’s platform (think WordPress or any other site builder) lacks “extra functionality” to run well.
And that’s where plugins come in.
If you’re looking to self-improve your blogging in your PR career, here are ten must-have WordPress plugins which every PR pro needs for successful blogging.
But first: why are plugins essential for PR pros?
Most PR specialists do blogging or are responsible for creating a plethora of content, mainly for blogs, newsrooms, news, and pitches. Usually, they create other types of content that put forth a brand’s desired messaging.
And because they’re expected to send out press releases and create thoughtful, data-packed content all the time, having necessary plugins installed can improve their site’s performance—helping them maximize their reach and impact of their content.
In addition, PR pros rely on email verification plugins to verify the email addresses of all new users who register on their WordPress websites. Not only does this help to clean the website’s email list so that press releases and content are delivered to the correct email addresses. It also reduces bounce rates, and prevents spam and fake accounts which put the WordPress website at risk of being blacklisted by Google and other search engines. Furthermore, email verification plugins streamline the process of complying with anti-spam laws and regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL). Another thing, today’s PR pros are always in a rush to quickly draw insights on what’s working, then collect those findings into their workflow. Having essential plugins installed can help increase their site’s speed, soaring their analysis success rates.
PR pros always prioritize excellent communication. With the right plugin, they can ensure each message is SEO optimized and reaches the right audience. And that it’s compelling enough to spark the desired action.
Plugins can help PR pros scale their leadership efforts, and that’s why they make for great building blocks of any PR specialist’s site.
The question remains: should I get a free or premium blogging plugin for WordPress?
Free vs. premium plugins
The WordPress directory is chock-full of free WordPress plugins you can download and add to your website. So, why should you even buy them?
Three reasons justify buying WordPress plugins:
- Customization. Premium plugins add more customization features to your site, displaying your menu, header, footer, and other elements more attractively. So you don’t need to hire a part-time developer to fix anything, saving money on website cost and time.
- Maintenance and support. Premium plugins come with full-time support teams. And the plugins’ backend developers maintain all security and compatibility issues on newer WordPress versions (offering solutions almost instantly). Having great support helps you maintain a stable website with flawless performance.
- Benefits. Premium plugins boast unlimited features, providing you with lots of functionality when using your WordPress site.
(Side note: before settling on a plugin, ensure to consider its benefits and drawbacks.)
Ten must-have blogging plugins for WordPress
There are plenty of plugins that can help you measure your PR efforts. Sales team and PR teams can benefit from this detailed list of the best blogging plugins for WordPress.
1. RankMath
Rank Math is a dedicated WordPress SEO plugin. It flaunts advanced features and extra functionality that help take the guesswork out of WordPress SEO. If you want to reduce countless hours of repetitive work? The Rank Math plugin is all you need.
Additionally, it makes optimizing posts a breeze and features an easy-to-follow setup wizard that sets up your site’s webmaster profiles, social profiles, and SEO. It boasts a clean and straightforward interface that always presents the correct information.
The RankMath plugin goes beyond basic on-page optimization for your web page or blog. It runs multiple SEO tests to ensure your site’s configuration is correct.
Pricing: Free and Premium (price starts at $59/year)
2. Sucuri
Sucuri is a security WordPress plugin. Designed to keep your site protected against hacks, Sucuri comes with advanced security features, including email alerts, post-hack features, core integrity checks, malware scanning, and hardening features.
The security plugin lets you customize your blocklist and allowlist files, schedule scans, email alerts, and more. It simply provides security settings and customizations. The best part? You can control the plugin’s settings to fit all your site’s needs.
Sucuri can read malicious code hidden in the external source code of your site using SiteCheck scan features. It can also identify core file integrity issues as well.
Pricing: Free and Premium (price starts at $199.99/year)
3. Disable Comments
The Disable Comments plugin’s role is to disable comments on your WordPress site. This little-known plugin disables commenting on all attachments, web pages, and posts. It scraps off any comment-related options and features, which makes it perfect for PR pros that want to start a blog without dozens of unnecessary comments.
And when it comes to PR pros in blogging, this plugin can help weed out useless comments (and spam) and help them better respond to customer inquiries.
More specifically, it removes any comment-related items from your admin menu, widgets, and your site’s dashboard—leaving PR pros to practice active social listening, which is crucial to managing brand reputation.
Before enabling the Disable Comment plugin on your site, delete all your existing comments to avoid compatibility issues with your current theme. Anyone can use this plugin. Install the plugin and then open its settings to enable its primary functionality.
Pricing: Free
4. Elementor
The must-have Elementor plugin lives under the veil of Elementor—a leading page builder of the WordPress CMS (content management system).
So what tips the scales in the plugin’s favor?
It lets you add web pages to your site without writing a single line of code. Above all, it comes with multiple page elements that make crafting an effective site easier as well as multiple Addons if you wish to expand its functionalities.
Pricing: Free and Premium. (Price starts at $49/year).
5. Press Release Distribution
If you want to publish and send press releases—and other news and announcements —to various media sources, including news organizations, bloggers, and journalists, then the Press Release Distribution plugin might come in handy.
It allows you to create sections of press releases within your WordPress dashboard while effectively separating them from all your posts and pages.
The Press Release Distribution plugin can help PR pros to send announcements to various media outlets, reporters, journalists, agents, and news wires (with an intent to secure media coverage. Or rather, publish news on their sites or news feeds.)
Pricing: Premium (price starts at $99 per PR credit)
6. Link Whisper
The LinkWhisper WordPress plugin speeds up the process of internal linking and helps your WordPress site rank better in Google. It automatically “whispers” internal links suggestions to your site, improving your link structures.
An improved link structure helps Google rank your site on the SERPs (search engine results pages). It also helps your readers find quality content on your site. This plugin does the heavy lifting for you (of making intelligent link suggestions).
The LinkWhisper plugin lets you see all the “orphan” content on your site (or content with little to no internal links pointing to them). But it doesn’t stop there! It automatically adds target links and keywords to your orphan content with just a few clicks.
Pricing: Free
7. Revive Old Posts
Revive Old Posts is a social media sharing and scheduling plugin. It keeps your blog content alive by automatically sharing it across social networks—engaging your followers, growing your social following, and boosting your blog’s social media traffic.
And it executes all these actions without your effort. Most of all, it shares all your old and new content on a schedule. It’s a practical and time-saving plugin for anyone, including in-house PR teams, outsourced content creators, or PR pros.
The Revive Old Posts plugin is handy for PR pros specifically responsible for publishing content on brand-owned channels, such as social media outreach, customer-facing blogs, or email campaigns.
With PR pros using this plugin for social media marketing strategy, expect a positive impact on their social media platforms and their brand’s organic value.
Pricing: Free for four months. (Price starts at $20/year)
8. WP Rocket
Want your WordPress blog to achieve incredible speed results? The WP Rocket plugin can make your site or blog blazing fast. It’s an all-in-one web performance plugin that improves your PageSpeed score.
And that’s all PR pros want—to drive content strategy with a team of guest blog contributors, editors, and writers, without worrying about loading time when publishing content for email campaigns or customer-facing blogs.
The WP Rocket plugin helps you address the essential Pagespeed insights recommendations. And the best part? You don’t need to configure the plugin once installed and activated. So, it saves you time that you’d need to look for a tech expert.
Pricing: Premium. (Price starts at $59/year for one website)
9. Easy Table of Contents
The Easy Table of Contents WordPress plugin lets you create an engaging and modern “Table of Contents” for your custom post types, web pages, and posts.
The feature-focused plugin promises to add a table of contents for your site’s pages quickly and optimally. Besides using a one-click solution to add the table of contents to your posts and web pages, it offers various customization options.
The Easy Table of Contents plugin is a must in blogging because it provides a fully optimized and easy-to-add table of contents for your blog pages. And it’s also easy to use. You can add a table of contents to all your post types with a single click.
Pricing: Free
10. Pretty Links
Do you need help shrinking, beautifying, tracking, managing, and sharing URLs on and off your WordPress site? The Pretty Links plugin provides a lasting solution. It’s a link shortener plugin that uses your domain name to achieve its goal.
In other words, the Pretty links plugin creates clean and simple links. But it doesn’t stop there! It also tracks all hits on your URL and then provides a detailed report on the source of the hit—the host, their operating system, and the browser.
This plugin may come in handy if you wish to—
- Spread your site’s links on multiple forums
- Get your Twitter links to come from your domain
- Track your email clicks
- Clean up your affiliate links
Essentially, the plugin increases your site’s reach through sharing pretty links.
Pricing: Free and Premium (price starts at $199.50)
Enhance your blog with WordPress plugins
Whether you are a PR newbie or a polished PR professional, adding functionality to your blog is necessary, especially when engaging users navigating your blog content.
Not all plugins will resonate with your PR-related needs. But having a plugin that helps you publish and send press releases to various media outlets—and another one for social media sharing and scheduling—can help PR teams achieve their goals and objectives.
A helpful plugin can double your chances of reaching a broader target audience and even help you focus on your professional growth areas.
There’s a plugin for almost every functionality on your site. So, take full advantage of numerous WordPress plugins to improve your site’s user experience. It’s worth it.
Read More: Best WordPress SEO Plugins 2022
