Author: Nick SchÃ¤ferhoff

How to Easily Customize the WordPress Search Results Page
There are good arguments to customize many parts of WordPress — but the search results page? What reason could there possibly be to make changes to that? How could this page be any different?

The truth is, the WordPress search results page isn’t natively very interesting. This gives you the chance to highlight the articles you want more eyes on and make the page a little more useful.

I hereby, cordially, invite you to find out along with me. Just imagine, at the end of this post, we could both be smarter than we were before. Are you in?

Image source: Agence Olloweb/Unsplash

Why Customize WordPress’ Search Results?

Alright, let’s start off with reasons why you should consider making changes to your site’s search results page and what things you might customize.

The Purpose of the Search Results Page

First, let’s get clear about what the function of the search results page is. As you can probably guess, it is supposed to help users find content they are looking for. To that end, they can enter a search term into the search field (that’s hopefully present on your site — more on that below).

WordPress will then serve up the search results page with everything it can find regarding that query.

Why should you care about this? Seems like WordPress has this part covered automatically, doesn’t it?

Because the search results page can have great impact on your site’s user experience, especially for eCommerce websites:

According to Econsultancy, up to 30% of ecommerce visitors use internal site search. Due to the increased level of purchase intent from searchers, theyâ€™re known to convert up to 5â€“6x higher than the average nonâ€“site search visitor.

CXL

Makes sense, doesn’t it? Just think about how often you use the search function when you shop online. Exactly! But even WordPress sites without eCommerce functionality can benefit from learning how to customize the search results page.

What Could Be Improved About WordPress Search?

During my research, I could find the following areas of complaints about the native WordPress search function.

For one, until recently, there was no non-code way to customize the way the search results page looks. Unless you knew your way around PHP, CSS, and a code editor, you simply had to trust that your theme was doing a good job of displaying it and be satisfied with the content of the search page.

Secondly, the native WordPress search function is not always very good at what it does. It will often return no results for searches that actually have fitting matches.

In addition, it can be kind of slow. In good old PHP fashion, the WordPress search needs a page reload in order to display results, which isn’t the fastest way of doing things.

As a consequence, this leaves us with the following areas for improvement:
- Design — We’ll go over how to control the look of the WordPress search results page as well as the elements that show up on it.
- Search results — Making sure the results your visitors can find on the search page are relevant and satisfying.
- User experience — Improve search speed, make it more comfortable to use, and add some functionality to WordPress search that visitors are used to from Google or other search engines.
Sounds convincing at first glance, if you ask me. So, let’s get down to business.

Add a Search Form to Your WordPress Website

Naturally, working with the search results page in WordPress only makes sense if you even give your users a chance to access it. That means, you offer a search form somewhere where they can input their queries.

For that, WordPress offers a built-in search widget that you can place wherever want in your page templates and template parts. The latter is an especially good idea if you are using the same header on every page. In that case, you only need to edit the template part once and your changes will show up everywhere.

Generally, it’s a good idea to add the search form to a header, sidebar, or footer — elements that appear on every page. That way, you give your visitors an opportunity to search what they are looking for from wherever they may find themselves on your site.

How to make the search field show up on your site depends on whether you are using a block theme or classic theme.

Using a Block Theme and the Site Editor

If you use a block theme like Twenty Twenty-Two, you can perform this action via the Site Editor. You find it under Appearance > Editor.

In the initial screen, you can edit your homepage. When you click on the logo in the upper left corner, you gain access to the Templates and Template Parts menus.

For example, let’s say you want to add the search form to your theme’s default header. For that, go to Template Parts and then click on Header (Dark, small).

Doing so leads you to this screen:

Here, adding the search form is pretty simple, you can do it in several ways.

For one, use the plus sign in the upper left corner, look for the Search widget, and drag-and-drop it to your desired location.

Alternatively, create an empty element in the editor (e.g. via Insert before or Insert after on an existing element), click the plus sign on the editor page, and look for the search widget or enter /search to add it directly.

Either of these methods will make the search form appear in your theme that you can then customize with the help of the block options on the right and settings bar on top.

Save your changes and it will show up on the page.

The Same Process in a Classic Theme

If your site runs on a classic theme, you can add the search widget in any widgetized area that it offers. To find out which options exist, go to Appearance > Widgets.

Adding a widget works the same way as with the Site Editor. Click on the plus sign in the upper left corner or on one of the widget areas. Then, search or browse for the search widget and input it into the widget area.

If you are not satisfied with your choices, you can also add more widget areas to your theme.

Alternatively, it’s also possible to add the search form directly into your page templates via code. Paste the snippet below wherever you want it to appear.
```
<?php get_search_form( true ); ?>
```
Here, too, it makes sense to go for a template part such as your header, so you don’t have to do it for each template separately. Be aware, however, that you should always make file changes like this in a child theme.

Change the Design of the Search Results Page

Alrighty, now that you have search form on your site, it’s time to customize the look of the WordPress search results page once someone uses it. This process, too, depends a lot on your theme.

Using the Site Editor, Again

The look of the search results page in WordPress is controlled by a page template. The one we are looking for in the Site Editor is called Search (who would have thought) and you find it in the aforementioned Templates menu.

Click it to land in the Template Editor.

Here, you can make all the changes you want. For example, this is what the search results page looks like in Twenty Twenty-Two by default:

One of the easiest things I can do to modify the way it looks is to exchange the default Query Loop block with a block pattern. After that, it ends up looking like this:

Quite different, don’t you think?

Customizing the Search Results Page Via Code

In case you are not using a WordPress theme that lets you customize the search results page visually, you can also do it with code. To render the page, the theme will either use search.php, if it is present, or else fall back on index.php (check out the WordPress template hierarchy to understand how that works).

Once you have created a child theme, copy the parent theme’s search.php to it or else, make copy of index.php, rename it to search.php and place it in the child theme. After that, open it with your favorite code editor and customize it to your needs.

Of course, if you are using a classic theme and don’t know code, you can also use a page builder plugin.

Plugin Options to Improve the WordPress Search Results

After dealing with the design of the search results page, it’s time to talk about how to customize its content. For that, we will concentrate on plugin options. First of all, because there are several good ones out there, secondly, because customizing the search results via code simply goes beyond what we can cover in this article.

1. Relevanssi

This plugin replaces the standard WordPress search function completely and makes the following changes:
- Order search results by relevance, not date.
- Enable fuzzy matching, meaning it also shows partial matches to the search query.
- Support for using the AND and OR query modifiers as well as quotes for exact match search.
- Highlight search terms in search excerpts and in the results when you click on them.
- Ability to search taxonomies, comments, custom fields, including WooCommerce SKUs and Advanced Custom Fields content.
- Search suggestions when there are no result (“did you mean…?”).
The free version offers a lot more features and there is a premium version with even more. Just be careful: Relevanssi needs a lot of database space for its index, so be sure you have that available in your hosting before installing the plugin.

2. Ivory Search

One of the main functionalities of Ivory Search is that it lets you create unlimited search forms and display them wherever you want. Available positions include the site header, footer, widget areas, navigation, and anywhere where you can place shortcodes. You can design and customize your forms as needed or use the included templates. In addition, you can customize what content exactly each will search for.

Besides that, the plugin improves the search functionality on your site in the following ways:
- Faster search through an index-based search engine.
- Search images, files, and attachments, shortcode content, WooCommerce products, and more.
- Live search functionality.
- Search specific content or exclude content from results.
- Track searches on your site in search analytics.
- Multilingual search.
A premium version with additional features is available.

3. Better Search

This plugin, too, replaces the default WordPress search. It produces results acccording to both the title and content of your posts, pages, and custom post types. You can also control where the plugin searches, including meta fields, authors, taxonomies, even comments.

What’s more, Better Search shows results by relevance and allows you to customize the search output, assign greater weight to the title or content, and offers other filters and actions. Finally, you can show the most popular searched content in form of a widget and customize searach results with your own template and custom CSS.

4. Paid Search Plugins

Aside from the above plugins, there are also a bunch of paid offers:
- WP Fastest Site Search — Though in the WordPress directory, this is actually a paid plugin with a 14-day trial period. The only free part is the voice search functionality, which is useful for mobile. Aside from that it comes with no-code UI customizations, PDF and image search, synonyms and autocomplete, and more.
- SearchWP — Sorts results depending on where they are found. The plugin can search custom fields, ecommerce products and details, categories, tags, and other taxonomies, the content of documents on your site (e.g. PDF, docx), and more. You can adjust the importance given to different search attributes and exclude taxonomies. The same company also makes a free enhancement for live search.
- YITH WooCommerce AJAX Search — Specifically for improving search on WooCommerce sites. Allows to search within a specific category, by vendor, or by SKU. It can show prices in search results and has different search form layouts available, including full-screen.
5. Other Search Plugins

Finally, here are a few plugins that make smaller changes to the WordPress search functionality:
- Search & Filter — A free plugin that allows searchers to refine their search by choosing categories, tags, or post types to search in. It also displays the search term at the top of the search page. That way, users can be sure that the search was done, even if it turns up empty.
- Highlight Search Terms — A small and lightweight plugin that does only one thing: highlight the search term in search results as well as on the pages it found after clickthrough. It’s compatible with BuddyPress/bbPress as well.
Final Thoughts: WordPress Search Results

And there you have it, both the reasons why you might want to customize the WordPress search results page and how to do it. I, for one, feel a bit smarter, how about you? I hope you use the information above to improve this vital part of your WordPress website.

Do you know any other ways to customize the WordPress search results page? Anything else to add? Let us know in the comments!

The post How to Easily Customize the WordPress Search Results Page appeared first on Torque.
23.02.2023
Define Your Target Audience: 15 Tips and Tools to Reach Clients
If you’re like most people running a business, you probably don’t have a lot of time to waste. The last thing you want to do is spend months creating a product or service that no one wants to buy. So how do you know if your idea is even worth pursuing? The answer: properly define your target audience.

Defining and understanding who you are creating something for is essential for any business owner. But figuring out how to go about doing that might seem a tad confusing at first.

Thankfully, we’ve gathered a variety of tips about how to define a target audience in one place. In addition, we have rounded up some of the best tools available to assist you — so you can make your next move with confidence.

What is a Target Audience and Why Does It Matter?

Your target audience is the group of people that are most likely to become consumers of your product or service. Knowing your target audience helps you craft messaging and commodities that meet their needs. Doing so makes it easier to attract them as customers and, ultimately, make more sales.

Often, people will conflate the ideas of target audience and target demographics (or target market). While they are related, itâ€™s important to understand the difference between them.
- Target demographics refer to a set of characteristics that define an individual or group. Often, these can include age, gender, marital status, education level, job title, and income level.
- Target audience, on the other hand, is more focused on understanding a personâ€™s needs and interests. It takes into consideration things like lifestyle, values, and motivations.
Knowing your target audience helps you understand what they need. This helps you get the most out of your efforts, while also ensuring that you will find customers.

With target audience information, you can then create customer personas. These are detailed profiles of the ideal customer that can help you make more informed decisions about your business. Personas also help you develop content, create campaigns, and send targeted messages to the right people.

Image source:
HubSpot

How to Define Your Target Audience

So how do you define your target audience? Itâ€™s actually a lot easier than you might think.

1. Examine Your Current Customers

Take a look at your current customer base. Why do they choose to buy from you? What are their needs, wants, and motivations?

You can source this information through social media, analytics, surveys, and audience measurement tools â€“ which weâ€™ll discuss later. Knowing it can help you determine who else may be interested in what you have to offer.

Also look at what campaigns have been successful in the past. This can provide useful insights for your current and future marketing efforts.

2. Use Surveys and Interviews to Gather Data

Surveys and interviews can provide insight into the true needs and desires of potential customers. They let you ask questions that will help you narrow down your target audience. A few things you might want to inquire about include:
- What do you like and dislike about products or services in your industry?
- How likely are you to buy a product or service in your industry?
- What features or benefits are most important to you when making a purchase?
- What are your biggest challenges or pain points?
3. Perform Market Research

Market research helps you get a better understanding of what your target audience is looking for. Youâ€™ll want to examine things like age, gender, location, as well as purchasing habits. This can help you better tailor your messaging and product offerings to this specific group of people. Tool tips for this step are coming up soon.

4. Look at Competitor Analysis

Studying the tactics of your competitors can help you uncover potential opportunities for your own company. Knowing who theyâ€™re targeting and how theyâ€™re going about it can give you a better understanding for your own efforts.

Image source:
ahrefs

5. Identify Your Ideal Customer

Once youâ€™ve gathered all of your research, itâ€™s time to identify your ideal customer. This is the person you want to target with your product or service. Write down who they are and what motivates them, so you can tailor your offerings accordingly. A few other things to make note of include:
- What are their pain points?
- How do they like to be communicated with?
- What type of messaging resonates with them?
- What channels should you use to reach them?
6. Identify Who Your Ideal Customer is Not

While it’s important to define who you should target, it’s just as important to figure out who you shouldn’t. Identifying who your ideal customer isnâ€™t can help you save time and money that you are not spending on trying to attract the wrong people. A few key attributes to make note of include:
- Demographics: The age, gender, and location â€“ to start â€“ of those who wouldnâ€™t buy your product or service.
- Purchasing habits: The general price point and quality standards that donâ€™t apply to your target audience.
- Interests: The general categories of interests that your target audience couldnâ€™t be bothered with.
- Previous experiences: Life experiences that donâ€™t apply to your target audience. For instance, if your product is geared toward college students, your target audience likely doesnâ€™t include homeowners or parents.
There will be exceptions to these attributes, of course, but your goal here is to generalize.

7. Monitor and Analyze Your Customerâ€™s Habits and Preferences

Once you’ve identified your target audience, it’s time to start tracking their habits and preferences. Monitor their behavior and track user engagement in order to refine your marketing tactics and ensure you’re meeting their needs. You can do this by keeping an eye on social media conversations, Google search trends, and by using one or more tools designed to help you keep track of user behavior.

By using the tips above, you can accurately define your target audience. Even so, carrying out these steps is a challenge without the right tools on hand. So let’s talk about that next.

Tools for Defining Your Target Audience More Efficiently

Here are some excellent tools that can help you define your target audience more efficiently. Let’s take a look at some of them now.

1. SparkToro

SparkToro is a great audience research tool. It lets you see what websites your customers go to and what social media accounts they interact with the most. SparkToro also provides info on the hashtags your customers use, whose content they reshare, and so forth. Knowing this, you can meet them where they’re at.

This tool can give you a better understanding of not only who your target audience is, but also what motivates them. All you need to do is plug in the topic you’re researching and SparkToro will generate an audience report with all the relevant data.

2. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a great tool for understanding who your target audience is. It gives you insight into website traffic and user behavior. You can also see which demographics are the most engaged with your content. Plus, analytics help you track user engagement and conversions so you can identify areas of opportunity.Â

3. Built-In Social Media Analytics

Many social media platforms have built-in analytics tools. They allow you to track how your content is performing and whoâ€™s engaging with it. Use them to narrow down your target audience and see which demographics are most likely to respond to your content.

For instance, Facebook offers Audience Insights, which provides details into the types of people you should target. Similarly, Instagram insights can provide valuable data on whoâ€™s interacting with your account and what kind of content they respond to best.

4. Quantcast Measure

Quantcast Measure is a powerful audience measurement tool. It helps you understand whoâ€™s visiting your website, what theyâ€™re looking for, and how they found you. The tool can even tell you where your visitors are located so you can tailor your offerings accordingly.

Once you set up an account, Quantcast Measure will give you detailed information on your visitorsâ€™ age, gender, and interests. This allows you to further refine your target audience and make sure your content aims at the right people.

5. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a great tool for conducting surveys among your target audience. For example, you can collect feedback from your current customers as well as potential ones. This is helpful for learning more about their preferences.

To get started, just create a survey with questions related to your product or service. Then, send it out and analyze the results. You can also use SurveyMonkey to create polls and quizzes to further engage your target audience.

6. Audiense

Next up is Audiense. It’s a data-driven tool that helps you identify, analyze, and engage with your preferred customers. The software allows you to segment and target specific demographics. Doing so lets you adjust your content marketing to the needs of your customers.

Audiense titles itself as an audience intelligence platform, which is an apt description considering its comprehensive range of features. You can use the data collected to make decisions about multiple aspects of your business from keyword research and content generation to persona building and influencer outreach.

7. SEMRush

SEMRush is a powerful tool to identify keywords and phrases related to your target audience. It also provides insights into competitor activities, so you can adjust your strategy accordingly. This tool is especially useful for search engine optimization (SEO). It helps you rank your website higher in search engines for the keywords your target audience is definitely searching for.Â

8. Keyhole

Keyhole is a social media report building tool that helps you analyze and track your online presence. It can identify influencers in your niche, as well as monitor hashtags and keywords related to your target audience.

Keyhole also helps you spot the right opportunity to promote your brand and get in front of potential customers at the moment theyâ€™re looking for what you have to offer. It even incorporates competitor analysis for further refining your target audience.

Get to Know Your Target Audience With These Tools and Tips

Knowing who exactly you are trying to attract is essential for your marketing efforts. By getting to know your target audience inside and out, you avoid creating the wrong content, products, and message. Doing so will save you money, time, and effort down the line.

Ultimately, with the help of the data-driven tools above, you can gain a detailed picture of your ideal customers and what they respond to best. While it’s possible to collect a lot of this information by hand, having tools that aggregate it automatically makes things a lot easier.

However, tools and research can only do so much. The key is to actually use the knowledge to improve your products and business.

Will you be using any of the tips or tools outlined here today? Did we miss your favorite? Feel free to let us know!

The post Define Your Target Audience: 15 Tips and Tools to Reach Clients appeared first on Torque.
07.02.2023
How to Use Mastodon: A Step-by-Step Beginnerâ€™s Guide (2023)
Since the acquisition and continued dismantling of Twitter by a certain billionaire, an increasing number of people are interested in learning how to use Mastodon, one of Twitter’s more popular competitors.

How popular?

Well, the news recently dropped that Twitter now officially blocks links to Mastodon (and other social platforms) and flags them as malware. So, if Twitter’s new owner takes Mastodon seriously, maybe the rest of us should as well?

All snark aside, after users started quitting Twitter in droves and looking for a new home, Mastodon is one of the biggest winners of this exodus. If, like me, you don’t yet know much about this alternative social network other than its name, this is the right post for you. In this beginner’s guide to Mastodon, we will cover everything you need to know to decide whether it’s worth switching to and how to do it.

What is Mastodon?

So, what is Mastodon? The short answer to that question is that it is an open-source, decentralized microblogging platform that lets its users communicate with each other in a fashion similar to Twitter. Founded in 2016 by Eugen Rochko, the platforms has seen a huge surge in popularity in recent months.

To better understand it, let’s clear up two of the terms above first:
- Open source — If you are working in the WordPress sphere, you should already be familiar with this. It means that Mastodon does not belong to any one company but is produced by volunteers to make it available for free.
- Decentralized — In contrast to most established social networks, Mastodon is not one monolithic provider. Instead, similar to WordPress, the software allows anyone to host their own installation of it. Users can sign up at each node and use the entire network. Therefore, Mastodon is less one cohesive platform as more a collection of servers that all have the ability to talk to each other. This type of decentralization is one of the main ideas behind web3.
What Can You Do With Mastodon?

Mastodon is very similar to other microblogging platforms. In fact, it comes across as a bit of a combination of Twitter and Tumblr.

You can post content and share what others have published (called reblogging or boosting instead of retweeting). There are hashtags and lists, you are able to add GIFs, images, and videos to your posts, and do everything else you have come to expect from social networks.

You can also edit your posts out of the box, something that Twitter users waited a long time for. In addition, verification is easy, you simply need to add a special link to a website that belongs to you (more on that below).

Another way the platform differs from other social networks is in the topic of content moderation. Because Mastodon operates decentralized, it doesn’t have network-wide content rules. Instead, each server has their own policy that is enforced by the users who are running it. They also decide which other servers you can communicate with.

How to Sign Up to Mastodon

Because of how Mastodon works, you can’t just create a username and start publishing, you first need to find a server (called instance in Mastodon parlance) for yourself first. That server will also be part of your username.

However, don’t worry, you are not limiting yourself to your original instance. No matter which you use to sign up to Mastodon, you can always talk to users on other servers as well.

1. Find a Server

Alright, so your first step is to look for a server you want to join. You can find a list of available instances here. The page will also ask you for some initial information (language preference, whether you’d like a big or small instance, moderation rules) in order to give you relevant recommendations.

Pro tip: Use the Advanced mode. It allows you to sort instances by number of users and more.

If you are unsure which one to pick, here are some tips:
- Find your old audience — Use Debirdify to find where members of your existing Twitter audience hang out on Mastodon. That way, you can move to where there are already familiar faces.
- Check the most active instances — This list shows what servers are most active, so you can be sure that there is an actual conversation going on that you want to join.
When picking an instance, it’s important to note that, since the Twitter exodus started, many of the more popular servers have been overrun and are currently not accepting new members. Therefore, it might be better to join a smaller instance for the moment.

As mentioned, that does not limit you to only the members of that server. Also, you can always move to another server if you don’t like the one you joined initially. At the same time, make sure to read the rules of your instance beforehand so you don’t violate them and get banned.

2. Join Your Chosen Instance

Once you have figured out which instance you would like to become a part of and that it is currently accepting members, it’s time to hit the Create account button.

After a list of your server’s policies, you should eventually land on the sign-up form.

Input the required information. The fields are pretty self-explanatory. For the username, it makes sense to use the same as your other social handles if it is available. Agree to the privacy policy and hit Sign up.

Mastodon will send you a message to verify your email address. Click the verification link and you are done. Congratulations, you have successfully signed up to Mastodon!

As already mentioned, your handle always consists of both your username and server, e.g. @username@mastodon.social. So, be sure to remember which instance you joined. You also need the full name to sign in to Mastodon from another browser or app. It only changes when you move servers.

3. Complete Your Profile

Like other social platforms, Mastodon gives you many different ways to share more information about yourself. You can do so using the Edit profile link in the upper left corner or when viewing your profile while logged in.

You can edit your display name, add a bio, as well as change your header and profile picture (called Avatar here).

You also have the possibility to make selections for your findability and follows, e.g. whether you want to manually approve follow requests, make your account discoverable for others, or hide who you follow or who follows you.

In addition, you can put additional metainformation to your profile using labels and content.

This is perfect for things like adding your website address or other Internet presences you think your visitors and followers should know about. Finally, there is an example link if you want to verify your Mastodon profile through your website.

You might also want to check out the menu item Featured hashtags.

Here, you are able to input some hashtags that you use a lot. They will appear clickable on your profile and show visitors your public posts under that tag.

4. Learn How to Use the Mastodon Interface

Once your account has been established and you are logged in, you land on the main Mastodon interface.

It should look somewhat familiar and a lot of it is self-explanatory but let’s still go over it step by step.

Search Field, Profile, and Post Field

In the top-left corner you find the aforementioned search field. Here, you can enter hashtags, usernames (including the instance name!) and look for users or posts by URL. Below that, there is a link to your profile and one to edit it.

More importantly, you find the input field to create your posts. Simply start typing. There is a character counter (the number of available characters depends on your instance) and icon to add emojis in the upper right corner. In the bottom bar, you find options to add an image, change your privacy settings, add a content warning, or change the language. You can also mark media as sensitive and add an ALT description for visually impaired users.

Mastodon can even detect text from an image and automatically add it as a description (up to 1500 characters). The big Publish! button sends your message out to the world.

Main Feed

In the middle of the screen on your homepage you, of course, find the main feed. Here, you see posts from people you follow with the option to reply to, boost, favorite, or bookmark them at the bottom. You can also click the three-dot icon for more options.

At top of the feed there is a loudspeaker icon for announcements from your server and some filter options to enable or disable boosts and replies to appear in your feed.

Mastodon’s Main Menu

On the right, you have the main menu. This, too, should look relatively familiar. Here is what you find unter the different menu items:
- Home — The link to your Mastodon homepage.
- Notifications — Here, you learn about new follows, mentions, and other things happening with your profile.
- Explore — Posts, hashtags, and news that are trending across the Mastodon universe as well as recommended profiles for you. Note that you can also find trending hashtags at the bottom right of the screen.
- Local — The most recent posts of the instance you are on.
- Federated — A live feed of posts being published in the Mastodon network.
- Direct messages — Here, you take care of your direct messages. Side note: It’s easy to mistake private and public messages when composing, so be mindful about that. PMs are also not encrypted and visible to server admins, therefore, they are not suitable for sensitive information or business dealings.
- Favourites — A list of posts you have favorited.
- Bookmarks — Posts that you have bookmarked.
- Lists — Gives you the ability to set up lists and add accounts to them to create custom feeds.
Pro tip: For even more options, go to the Preferences menu and tick the box where it says Enable advanced web interface.

This changes the interface to something very reminiscent of Tweetdeck, which I am quite partial to.

5. Find Your Friends and People to Follow

Of course, what makes social networks most exciting and useful are the people you are connected to. So, if you miss all the friends you made along the way on Twitter, you probably want to see if you can reconnect to them on Mastodon. You have several options for that:
- Manually — If you know the handles of people that you are interested in, you can simply use the Mastodon search function. Type in their name or username and follow them from the results list.
- Using tools — Use the aforementioned Debirdify or Fedifinder to find people you follow on Twitter or that you have added to a list, then connect with them all at once. In addition, check the hashtag #TwitterMigration and filter it using â€œPeople you Followâ€.
6. Start Posting

Now that you’ve got your bearings, you can properly start posting on Mastodon. Your first post can be a bit of background information on you, your interests, business or what else makes you tick. Post it, then pin it to the top of your feed. That way, visitors can get a good introduction to you and what to expect if they want to follow you.

Aside from that, do the same stuff that you do on Twitter. Share your thoughts and links, add hashtags and images, and engage with others.

Side note: Since Mastodon has seen growth only recently, it is not part of any of the social media scheduling tools yet. However, the program has a native scheduler that you can use to create posts in advance and have them go out at a later time.

7. Check Your Preferences

You find the preferences under a menu item of the same name.

It’s generally a good idea to go through them as there is a lot to discover, such as:
- Accessibility settings, such as slowing down animations
- What events you get e-mail notifications for
- Filter which languages you want to see content in
- Move your account to another server
- Filter and manage your followers and people you follow
- Settings to hide certain content
- Enable automatic post deletion
- Set up two-factor authentication
Again, have a look for yourself, there is more to discover.

Are You Planning to Move to Mastodon?

Twitter alternatives are clearly having a moment. The mismanagement over at the original platform leads to lots of users looking for a new home and Mastodon is one that can quickly feel familiar. It’s free, open source, and quite easy to use. While some things, like its decenetralized nature, take some getting used to, the overall functionality is very similar to what you are used to from Twitter.

So, should you make the complete jump over to Mastodon?

That’s a bit up to you. Twitter is not going anywhere for the foreseeable future. It’s up to you if you want to use Mastodon as a replacement or addendum to your existing presence. Whatever you decide, be sure to look me up! I’d love to connect.

Did you sign up to Mastodon and would like to share your experience and tips? Please do so in the comments below!

The post How to Use Mastodon: A Step-by-Step Beginner’s Guide (2023) appeared first on Torque.
01.02.2023
Top 5 Blogging Trends of 2023 You Definitely Shouldnâ€™t Ignore
What new trends can we expect to emerge in blogging in 2023? While blog writing has been around for a long time, and its basic premise doesn’t change much (put words on screen, publish), it does go through developments and fads. Some of them come and go, others stick around for longer or become a permanent fixture of the medium.

To make sure you stay up to date on what’s going on in the blogging game, in this post, we will examine five of the trends you can expect to encounter this year. Knowing this allows you to stay current on the latest practices as well as gain inspiration what you could do better or differently on your own blog. Either way, here are the latest blogging trends 2023.

1. Custom Visuals

Image source:
Enchanted Marketing

Visuals have always been a key part of blog content. They provide your readers with necessary breaks from long walls of text, present information in a different medium, and make your content more pleasant to consume. Need proof? Orbit Media found that bloggers who use ten-plus images in their posts report higher rates of success.

Image source:
Orbit Media

So, do we agree that using visuals is good? Good. However, why the need to go for custom graphics and not more generic images?

First of all, because we as humans have gotten pretty good at filtering out certain imagery on the Internet. For example, eye tracking studies show that stock photos are all but ignored these days.

Image source: Nielsen Norman Group

One of the biggest advantage of tailored graphics is in branding. With custom-made visuals, you can use color palettes and fonts that resonate with your blogâ€™s design and philosophy. Doing so makes sure your posts and pages look coherent and not pieced together. You can also create visuals that refer directly to the content they are part of, like charts, graphs, or infographics.

But what if you’re not a designer? Can you still take advantage of this blogging trend?

Thankfully, you do not need to be a Photoshop master (or hire one) to get the ball rolling. Tools such as Canva, Visme, and Prezi are perfect for beginners who donâ€™t know much about design. These tools come with pre-built templates, color palettes, and fonts that make putting together custom graphics easier. They also have the option to create/import your own color palettes and fonts.

2. Increased Interactivity

From twelve seconds in 2000 to only eight seconds in 2015, human attention span has drastically dropped over the years. In a world where your audienceâ€™s attention span is shorter than that of a goldfish (nine seconds), how do you keep them interested? The answer: interactive content.

With built-in interactivity, your readers get a chance to engage with your content in new and innovative ways. If you are looking to add some, here are a few good options.

Videos

Embedding videos in your content has always been one of the easiest ways to boost audience interaction. The rise of visual content in the last few years (TikTok anyone?) has only intensified consumers’ thirst for moving images. As a consequence, up to 86% of businesses already use videos for marketing in some form in 2022 and it’s a good idea for your blog to be among them.

While just including videos in your content already makes your blog posts more interactive, you can even go a step further and add interactivity to the videos themselves. This can be in the form of hotspots and time triggers, such as popups and CTAs, that prompt viewers to move their pointer to certain areas of the video in order reach a particular time stamp. Vimeo is a video platform that can do this out of the box.

However, it is also possible make YouTube videos more interactive, for example in the style of a choose-your-own-adventure approach.

GIFs

If you want to add a sprinkle of fun and interactivity to your blog, GIFs are another way to go. These animated images can add a spark of color and humor to your content and make it less boring.

If you want to dip your toe into this, websites such as Giphy are a great place to find GIFs. Once youâ€™ve chosen one, inserting it into your content is fairly simple – either use autoembeds (like in the image above) or add it via an image block.

Quizzes

Have you seen those Buzzfeed quizzes about all sorts of weird topics?

Say what you will about Buzzfeed but their formula seems to be working. And you can use it for yourself as well. Adding short exams to your content is yet another way to make it more interactive. It does not just engage your readers â€” it also lets them test out their knowledge!

If you want to do the same on your blog, WordPress plugins such as Quiz And Survey Master or Quiz Maker can come in handy. With these plugins, you can create quizzes for different topics, categories, and pages.

3. Originality

It’s easy for websites in a niche to become echo chambers that repackage the same information over and over again. In such a landscape, being original can immediately make you stand out. Originality does not just add freshness to your blog, it also establishes your thought leadership and displays your commitment to your readers.

There are different ways to make your content original. You can talk about a unique topic, provide an uncommon perspective, or do your own research. In fact, the third option is the easiest way to level up your blog â€” with authentic research, chances of success rise by up to 41%.

Image source:
Orbit Media

However, we get it — not everyone has the bandwidth to conduct original research. If you want a quick way to boost your contentâ€™s originality, another way is interviewing Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). This allows you to enrich your content with the latest information in the industry and add a unique flavor to it.

There are several tools available to reach out to SMEs. Examples include Help A Reporter Out (HARO), Help a B2B Writer, Terkel, and Qwoted. You can also reach out to people in your industry and conduct your own surveys using Google Forms and Typeform. Lastly, another easy way to talk to an expert is to tweet about your queries with the hashtag #JournoRequest on Twitter.

A @CentSai reporter would like to hear from #business operators for commentary on keeping employees happy and motivated in 2023â€”what is your strategy? Submit your source and get qwoted: https://t.co/r1tqwf0fLx #PRrequest #JournoRequest

— Qwoted (@qwoted) December 23, 2022

4. Focus on Content Experience

One of the bigger blogging trends in 2023 is the shift from consuming content to experiencing it. Running a successful blog no longer means simply delivering accurate information to your readers. You also have to consider other factors to make the content more appealing.

But how can you enhance the overall content experience? By focusing on core web vitals and improving your overall content ecosystem.

Core Web Vitals

Imagine clicking on a blog post to read it and encountering countless issues with the page. It’s taking forever to load, every click and scroll takes minutes to process, and the page is constantly shifting and jumping.

With reader attention span at an all-time low, this nightmare can quickly make your audience lose interest. To counter this, Google introduced core web vitals in 2020. These are measurements of key aspects of page speed and user experience that also influence search ranking.

If you want to learn more about this topic, check our article on how to improve core web vitals.

Your Content Ecosystem

Your content is not detached from the ecosystem that it is part of. Even if your writing is brilliant, if you present it in an environment that sends readers running for the hills screaming, it won’t perform well.

Besides lack of core web vitals above, what are examples of a bad content ecosystem?
- Masses of popups or other interruptions and distractions (multi-step cookie notices anyone?)
- Autoplaying videos or audio (seriously, who still does this in 2023!?)
- Low contrast or other web design problems
- Bad website or information architecture that leaves visitors clueless about what to do
In short, the goal is to make sure that each piece of content is part of a larger puzzle that makes sense. To create such an ecosystem, it helps to be clear on your audienceâ€™s journey. That means possible entry points and how to push readers further.Â Aside from that, look into building content clusters.

5. Cross-Channel Promotion

Simply churning out blog posts was once enough to be successful on the web — but that’s no longer the case. These days, you also need to invest your efforts in other marketing channels like SEO, email marketing, and social media.

Therefore, one of the blogging trends that will be dominant in 2023 is cross-channel promotion. This marketing strategy integrates all your marketing channels and unifies their plans, data, and goals across the board.

This is different from multi-channel marketing, which also uses several channels to attract customers. However, here, each channel works independently. In contrast to that, cross-channel promotion uses all channels to push out the same message at the same time.

Image source:
LocaiQ

How can you do that?

The first thing you need is a Customer Data Platform. CDPs can help unify, consolidate, and organize consumer data from all your channels in one place. Some good candidates to check out are Bloomreach, Insider, and Segment.

After that, you can carry out micro-segmentation and group your audience according to different demographic details, characteristics, and buying behaviors.Â This can help you hyper-personalize your content and marketing channels to meet prospects where they are in their journey.

For example, you can open emails with a readerâ€™s name, adjust the mailing frequency to their preferences, craft content that targets their needs, and otherwise cater to what your audience is looking for. In an environment as saturated as the online space, this kind of personalization is a good way to stand out.

Hop on These 2023 Blogging Trends Right Away!

Even an established medium like blogging still sees trends come and go. Being aware of the developments above allows you to decide which ones you want to partake in and which you want to ignore.

As you can see, many of the trends above heavily focus on user experience. Therefore, if you want to follow any trend this year, let it be figuring out how to better serve your audience with the content you provide. This goes both for what you write about and how you present it.

If that is your main takeaway, you can make sure you end up with a better blog at the end of 2023 than you started with.

With 2023 upon us, what blogging trends do you consider most important? How are you planning to improve your own blog this year? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Top 5 Blogging Trends of 2023 You Definitely Shouldn’t Ignore appeared first on Torque.
25.01.2023
8 Best WordPress Gutenberg Blocks (And How to Use Them)
The Gutenberg editor has completely changed how we build websites and web pages with WordPress. It allows users to create content and layouts piece by piece and comes with many tools to do so. In this post, we want to look at some of the best blocks Gutenberg has to offer for that purpose.

The WordPress editor is a complex piece of software. It’s easy to overlook some of the features of Gutenberg, including the many blocks it comes with.

Consequently, there might be some that you have no idea exist but that could seriously improve your workflow and make it easier to run your site. This list of the best Gutenberg blocks aims to make sure that isn’t the case.

How to Add Any Block to the WordPress Editor

Before moving on to the finest layout elements included in Gutenberg, let’s go over a quick refresher for how to add blocks to the editor. Basically there are three different possibilities:
- Slash commands
- The Add block button
- The block inserter
Here’s how each of them work.

1. Using Slash Commands

These get their name from the fact that you access them by typing a slash forward (“/”) in an empty line of the editor. Doing so automatically opens a menu with frequently used blocks.

You can directly choose one via the mouse cursor or arrow keys on the keyboard. At the same time, if what you are looking for doesn’t show, simply start typing the name of the block you want to insert. It will then appear in the menu for you to pick.

This is the fastest way of adding a block to the WordPress editor. It works both in the page/post editor and the Full Site Editor.

2. Via the Add Block Button

Next up, is using the small “+” button that shows up in the editor below the last-used line.

A click on it opens up a similar menu as the slash commands where you can pick from a list of frequently used blocks or search for what you need by name.

The menu also shows available block patterns during search. You need to choose blocks via the mouse, this menu does not work with the keyboard. A click on Browse all opens up the block inserter, which brings us to the third method.

3. Working With the Block Inserter

You can acccess the block inserter by clicking the big blue “+” button in the upper left corner of the editor screen.

Doing so opens up the entire list of blocks (and block patterns) available on your website in a separate side menu.

Scroll to find what you need or use the search bar on top to directly look for it. When you have found what you want, you have two ways to add it to the page:
1. Click on the block to insert it where the cursor is currently located (it will show the position with a blue line when hovering over your chosen element).
2. Drag and drop the block to your preferred place.
Here Are the Best Blocks Gutenberg Has to Offer

Alright, after this quick discourse, it’s time to see what blocks Gutenberg brings to the table that is worth inserting into your site and pages. Note, that in this case, we just concentrate on default blocks available in the editor (with one exception). Of course, it is possible to add more blocks to Gutenberg via plugins but we can not cover all of these here.

Query Loop

We are starting off the list with what is arguably the most powerful block that the block editor has to offer: the Query Loop. It’s basically a WordPress loop, the piece of code responsible for outputting any content in WordPress’ posts and pages, wrapped in a single block.

How It Works

Query Loop allows you to add custom content to your pages very easily. When you input it into the page, you have two options: start with a block pattern or a blank template. When choosing the second option, the block asks you to pick whether to display your content title, date, excerpt and/or image.

(Note: Working with this block works best if you already have posts on your website. Query Loop will use them as examples.)

Once on the page, you have a multitude of ways to customize the content. Two of the most important you can find in the block options on the right.

You can a) choose the post type that you want the block to output and b) add filters for what posts or pages show up. For example, you can direct the loop to only show content from certain categories, authors, or with certain keywords. In addition, you have the ability to order it from newest to oldest, the reverse, or either direction of the alphabet.

Besides that, you can customize what information shows up for each post in the loop. The easiest way to do that is via list view in the upper left corner. It allows you change the order of the post title, featured image, and date. You can even add things like excerpts (see also the next item in this list). Any change to Post Template will affect every single item in the Query Loop.

Finally, you are able to change the design of the content very easily. For example, you can switch the loop between list and grid view in the block settings bar on top.

It’s also possible to change the number of columns, modify colors, and more. That doesn’t even take into account the many possibilities to adjust the look via block patterns.

What’s Great About This Block

What makes Query Loop one of the best Gutenberg blocks? The fact that puts power into the hands of everyday users that, in the past, were only reserved for developers and people with good PHP skills. Now anyone can create and customize the WordPress loop and output filtered lists of content anywhere on their site.

Coupled with the Site Editor and its ability to export site customizations, that means that you can create a custom theme and edit page templates without any coding knowledge. Democratization of publishing at work.

Post Title, Excerpt, Content, Featured Image

We already mentioned these blocks in the Query Loop block section above but, as parts of the blocks for theme building and templating, they are worth looking into further.

How It Works

Post Title, Post Excerpt, Post Content, and Featured Image allow you to display important information and content from pages and posts wherever and in whatever order you want. For that reason, you usually don’t use them inside posts or pages but in templates and template parts. You access those in the Site Editor (Appearance > Editor, when using a block theme) by clicking on the logo in the upper left corner.

In the Templates menu, you are able to create custom page templates via the Add New button in the upper right corner.

You can assign those to posts and pages or, alternatively, set them up so that they automatically apply to certain kinds of content. Of course, you can also edit existing templates to change their design. For example, this is what single posts usually look like in the Twenty Twenty-Two Theme:

Here is the accompanying template:

Now, we can do the following changes:
1. Replace the featured image with a Cover block that shows the featured image, add a dark overlay, and move it to the same layout level as Post Content.
2. Move Post Title inside the Cover block, center it, and change its color to white.
3. Remove some of the spacers and change the style of the separator.
Just with these few steps, the page already looks quite different:

Here’s what the page template looks like in the Site Editor:

What’s Great About These Blocks

As you can see above, these are some of the best Gutenberg blocks because they are extremely potent. They allow you to move around and modify basic elements of your page display. With just a few clicks, you can make fundamental changes to how content appears on your site. Combine it with the Post Date, Categories, Tags, and Post Author Name blocks, and you can build web pages in whatever way you want.

Comments

The Comments block is the last theme block we want to talk about here. As you can probably deduce from its name, it’s responsible for adding the form to leave a comment as well as list existing user opinions on your pages.

How It Works

The important thing to keep in mind here, as will quickly become obvious when opening list view, is that the Comments block consists of several subblocks (note: you might have to click on the prompt to switch the block to editable mode to see these).

Namely, these are:
1. Comments Title
2. Comment Template (includes Avatar, Comment Date, Comment Author Name, Comment Edit Link, Comment Content, and Comment Reply Link)
3. Comments Pagination (consists of Comments Previous Page, Comments Page Number, Comments Next Page)
4. Post Comments Form
What should be obvious by now is that this compartmentalization allows you to arrange different elements in any desired order. For example, in the default block, the form to add a comment is at the bottom of the comments section. If want to make it easier for visitors to reach, you can simply move it to the top.

Alternatively, do you want to flip the order of the comment date and author name? Nothing easier than that.

In addition, each element comes with sensible design customization options. You can change the size and border radius of the Avatar picture, determine whether the author name should link to the author’s URL (and if it opens in a new tab or not), customize the comment date structure, or simply change text size, colors, and background colors for the elements.

What’s Great About This Block

Be honest, as a normal WordPress user, before Gutenberg, did you have any idea how to make changes to your comments section? Me neither.

Now, with the Comments block, you have almost full control over it! Even more, you can actually add a comments form to pages that usually don’t have them and also remove them on a post-to-post basis (if you create a template without the Comments block and assign it to your posts).

The only thing that’s definitely missing at the moment is the ability to customize text elements, e.g. change Leave a Reply at the top of the comments form to something that might go more with the branding of your site.

Row/Stack

Row or Stack is a formatting block that you encounter a lot but mostly without knowing it. Its sole purpose is to arrange elements horizontally or vertically and control their relation to each other.

How It Works

In order to understand how the Row and Stack blocks works, the best way is to look at template parts like headers and footers (inside the Template Parts menu in the Site Editor).

These not only often consist mainly of a Row element but also contain additional elements of the same type to control the look of elements inside the header.

As you can see in the markup above, this header is a Row block that contains another Row element for the site logo and title as well as a navigation block. It’s simple but sufficient.

However, the real magic is in the options that the Row block offers (besides the usual typography and color settings):
- Change the justification of elements (left, middle, right, space between items, and allow wrapping across multiple lines).
- Adjust orientation between horizontal and vertical (the latter turns it into a Stack rather than a Row block).
- Add padding and margin.
- Control block spacing.
This allows you to easily arrange elements in whatever way you need.

What’s Great About This Block

In the past, you needed to work with a lot of floats in order to arrange HTML elements horizontally and vertically. Even after things improved on the technology front, it was still necessary to familiarize yourself with things like flexbox and grid in order to make this happen. Now, it’s all just a few clicks away. Funny enough though, flexbox is the exact technology that the Row block is using, which you can see when you look at the page with browser developer tools.

Table of Contents

This is the only block that falls outside of the premise of this article as it is not yet part of the Gutenberg default blocks. At the time of this writing, it’s only available with the Gutenberg plugin installed and activated. However, it used to take extra plugins to get this functionality in the past and I am just excited that soon it will be a native function and wanted to give it a whirl.

How It Works

Creating a table of contents in Gutenberg is pretty easy. First, write and format your text, including your headings. Then, input the Table of Contents block into your page or post – that’s it. The block will automatically create a clickable table of contents from the headings on your page.

In addition, it adds the necessary HTML anchors so that the page jumps work. That way, when someone clicks on a link in the table of contents, the screen will automatically move to that heading.

What’s a bit thin at the moment are the block’s customization options. It only comes with settings to narrow down the content of the ToC to the current page (for paginated content) and customize things like text and background colors, sizes, as well as margin and padding.

If you want more detailed options (such as the ability to remove the double numbers that are visible above), you can convert it to a static list, which has more settings and makes the list editable.

In that case, the Table of Contents block only works as a shortcut. There is also no way to convert the list back to the original block.

What’s Great About This Block

Creating a table of contents used to be kind of tedious. You had to manually copy the heading text, input HTML anchors, format it, and add the right page links. Now, all of that is done for you – and in seconds!

Sure, there is room for improvement. The current lack of customization options is a bit of a bummer. Page jumps also don’t work in preview because the block uses the URL slug of the finished post. However, it still makes the process of adding a table of contents in WordPress much easier.

What Are Your Best Gutenberg Blocks?

The WordPress editor is constantly evolving and adding new blocks to its repertoire. For that reason, it’s easy to lose track of what exactly it has available.

Hopefully, you have found some inspiration in the article above and maybe the motivation to try out some more blocks. If you discover something you really like, we’d love to hear from you!

What do you consider to be the best Gutenberg blocks? Anything to add to the list? Let us know in the comments!

The post 8 Best WordPress Gutenberg Blocks (And How to Use Them) appeared first on Torque.
24.01.2023
Twenty Twenty-Three Theme Review: Flexible and Community Driven
Every year, WordPress releases a new theme to serve as its default theme — the one that comes with every fresh WordPress installation. As we head into 2023, WordPress has released their latest theme offering into the world, Twenty Twenty-Three, which we will review here.

WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg introduced Twenty Twenty Three in his State of the Word address. This theme aims to be fast, lightweight, and accessible, with a focus on simplicity and easy customization. In other words, it’s the perfect blank canvas for your next WordPress project. But what sets it apart from previous years? An intense focus on community involvement.

For that and other reasons, let’s take a closer look at some of the key features of this theme in our Twenty Twenty-Three review.

A Focus on Community

From the very beginning, the strong community has always been a huge asset for the WordPress project. That’s one of the things that makes it so special. And with Twenty Twenty-Three, they’re doubling down on that commitment.

This theme is the result of months of feedback and collaboration from the WordPress community. In fact, they even held a series of workshops to gather input on what people wanted to see in the new default theme.

The end result is something that feels like it was made by the community, for the community. It’s a beautiful example of what can be accomplished when we all work together.

Simplicity Dominates the Design

When it comes to the design of Twenty Twenty-Three, simplicity is the name of the game.

The team behind it focused on two things: speed and accessibility. As a result, they’ve created a clean and minimalist design that does away with anything superfluous. And since it’s essentially a simplified version of the Twenty Twenty-Two theme, it’s already familiar and easy to use.

This focus on simplicity extends to both the front-end and back-end design. The goal was to make it as easy as possible for anyone to get started with WordPress, whether they’re building their first site or hundredth.

In that regard, we think they’ve succeeded. Twenty Twenty-Three is beautiful and uncluttered, easy to use, and easy on the eyes. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s take a closer look at simplicity in action.

Barebones Layouts Aimed at Flexibility

One of the things you’ll notice right away when you review Twenty Twenty-Three is that there aren’t a lot of pre-built layouts to choose from. In fact, there’s pretty much only one. Open any of the templates, you see a blank canvas and a handful of blocks to work with. From there, it’s up to you to build the layout that you want.

The focus on simplicity means that each layout is easy to understand and customize. And since they’re all based on a grid system, they’re also simple to change on the fly.

If you want to add a new column or move an element around, all you have to do is drag and drop it into place. No need to worry about messy code or breaking things — everything is flexible and straightforward to change.

This might sound like a recipe for disaster, especially if you’re used to more complex designs, but it’s actually quite liberating. It gives you the freedom to create any kind of layout you can imagine, without being constrained by pre-existing choices.

Layout Options

While there is only one default layout, Twenty Twenty-Three does include the usual options to adjust it. Access these by clicking on Layouts in the Styles menu on the right-hand side of the screen.

From there, you can select different widths for the main content area and create different spacing, padding, and block spacing choices.

Color Settings

In addition to the layout options, Twenty Twenty-Three also includes functionality to adjust the theme’s colors. You also find them in the Styles menu under Colors.

Here, you can select different hues for the background, text, links, headings, and buttons to change up the look and feel of your site. The theme’s default color styles include shades of white, green, and black. But you can definitely customize this to your liking with the usual settings.

Typography

Next up, let’s review the typography choices that the Twenty Twenty-Three theme includes out of the box. Naturally, you find these by clicking on Typography on the right-hand side of the screen.

Twenty Twenty-Three comes with a handful of font families, as well as a few different font weights and styles. The supported typefaces include:
- DM Sans — A straightforward sans-serif font that would work great for body text.
- Inter — Another sans-serif font with softer curves. Also a suitable option for body text.
- IBM Plex Mono — A sans-serif font with mono-spacing featuring a typewriter style. Could go well for either titles or body text.
- Source Serif Pro — A delicate serif font that would look fantastic as quotations or titles.
- System Font — The fallback option should your browser not support one of the above font choices.
Typography in the Twenty Twenty-Three theme focuses heavily on the concept of fluid typography. That’s a fancy way of saying that the font size will adjust automatically to best fit the device it’s being viewed on.

This is a great feature, as it ensures that your content is always easy to read, no matter what device someone is using. And you can use it to establish a minimum and maximum font size value for your site if you wish to give it some parameters.

In addition to fluid typography, Twenty Twenty-Three also includes support for fluid spacing. This means that the distance between lines of text will also adjust automatically to best fit the user device.

Features like these are essential in a time when mobile viewing is at an all-time high. It’s simply inexcusable for a site to not look good on a mobile device in this day and age.

Style Variations

In addition to the individual typography and styling options, Twenty Twenty-Three also includes a few style variations. The are the real highlight of the theme and were created with the contribution of community members.

You find them in the Global Styles menu under Browse styles. Let’s go over them real quick.

Pitch

This is essentially a dark version of the default theme.

Canary

This style variation sports a yellow color scheme by default and utilizes a single type size and narrow columns.

Electric

Here’s another interesting option that features a gray background with a bold-colored text.

Pilgrimage

Another dark spin on the base theme.

Marigold

Marigold offers a softer color palette and straightforward layout.

Block Out

Living up to its name, this theme applies a duotone effect to your images by blocking out a portion of them.

Whisper

This style variation includes a border around the page and some unique styles for buttons and links.

Sherbet

Sherbet is bright and colorful — and it relies on a gradient background, meaning it’s right on trend.

Aubergine

If you’re looking for something darker, Aubergine might be a good fit. Its split-color background is definitely eye-catching.

Grapes

And lastly, there’s Grapes, which is a subdued option that would serve a text-heavy site well. You can see all of the style variations in action for yourself on Figma â€“ as well as snag a copy of the base theme.

How to Create Your Own Style Variation

You can also use the Create Block Theme plugin to create your own style variations. After downloading the plugin, use the WordPress Site Editor to create a custom layout, change colors, typefaces, and make any other changes you’d like.

Then when you’re done, all you need to do is create a style variation out of your settings selections. To do this, go to Appearance > Create Block Theme then on the next screen select the bubble next to Create a style variation.

Give it a name then click Create Theme to automatically generate a new .json file on your site.

Available Templates

While Twenty Twenty-Three doesn’t include a lot of pre-built layouts, it does come with a handful of templates to help you hit the ground running. You find them in the Templates menu, which you can access by clicking on the logo in the upper left corner of the Site Editor.

From there, you can select from one of the following:
- 404
- Archive
- Blank
- Blog (Alternative)
- Home
- Index
- Page
- Search
- Single
Many of these are default WordPress templates anyway. Those that are unique to Twenty Twenty-Three include Blank, Blog (Alternative), and the one for the 404 error page. You can access the files for these templates in the templates folder as well.

Template Parts

There are four template parts available:
- Comments
- Footer
- Header
- Post Meta
These are pretty self-explanatory and accessible via the Template Parts menu or in the parts folder for the Twenty Twenty-Three theme.

Potential Uses for the Twenty Twenty-Three Theme

Sometimes it’s helpful to put a WordPress theme into a usage context to get a sense of whether or not it’s a suitable choice for your needs. So, what kind of sites would benefit from using the Twenty Twenty-Three theme?

It’s a pretty versatile theme, so it’s suitable for a variety of different types of sites. Here are a few examples:
1. A portfolio site for a photographer or other type of visual artist. The theme’s focus on images and its various style options make it a great choice for this type of site.
2. A personal blog. The simple layouts and easy-to-read typography make Twenty Twenty-Three ideal for content-heavy sites.
3. A corporate website. The clean, professional look of the theme would work well for a company site, too.
4. An online store. The WooCommerce integration means that this theme can also power a beautiful online shop.
5. A news site. The various layout options and styles make this theme a good choice for a site that relies heavily on text.
As you can see, the Twenty Twenty-Three theme is a versatile and flexible option for a variety of different types of sites. So, if you’re looking for a theme that to create a beautiful and modern website, this one is definitely worth considering.

Final Review of the Twenty Twenty-Three Theme: Is It Worth a Look?

So, does the Twenty Twenty-Three theme measure up?

If you’re in the market for a new WordPress theme, then the answer is definitely yes. The theme is packed with features and options, and it’s every bit as flexible and customizable as you need it to be. Plus, with its focus on images and various style options, it’s a great choice for a wide range of different types of sites.

In addition, the fact that this theme was derived from community involvement gives you all the more reason to give it a try. After all, ideas from devs actively working in WordPress served as the foundation of this slimmed-down theme.

So, if you’re looking for a new WordPress theme, be sure to check out Twenty Twenty-Three. It just might be exactly what you need as we move into 2023 and beyond.

What’s your personal review of the Twenty Twenty-Three WordPress theme? How do you feel about style variations? Weâ€™d love to hear your feedback below!

The post Twenty Twenty-Three Theme Review: Flexible and Community Driven appeared first on Torque.
18.01.2023
Find WordPress Work: 16 Best Job Boards to Help You Get Hired

If you’re a WordPress developer or designer, the struggle to find work can feel overwhelming. Not to mention neverending.

The good news is that there are ways to get your WordPress skills in front of those who need it most. In fact, a good way to do this is to apply to ads on WordPress job boards. Doing so can help you land a high-quality client.

Of course, you have to know where to look first. That’s what we aim to solve here today. We’ve rounded up some of the best job boards for finding WordPress work currently available. So if you’re a WordPress developer or designer, read on to find your next great gig!

1. WPHired

WPHired is a relatively new WordPress job board. However, it has quickly becoming one of the best places to find quality WordPress work. Submitting a listing on the site is free but companies can opt to pay a fee to post a featured listing.

This ensures that all of the jobs posted on WPHired are high quality and from well-known companies in the WordPress industry. If you’re looking for a great WordPress gig, this is definitely a job board to check out. There appear to be between 5-10 new listings posted each week, so it’s definitely a place to keep an eye on.

2. Remote OK

If you’re not limited to working with companies in a specific location, then Remote OK is a great job board to find WordPress opportunities. The site lists positions from all over the world that you can do remotely.

You can use the search filter to only view WordPress jobs. This makes it easy to find quality WordPress gigs without having to wade through a bunch of other listings.

WordPress-related work appears fairly infrequently but it’s still worth keeping an eye on. Especially if remote work is something youâ€™re open to.

3. Authentic Jobs

Authentic Jobs is a long-running job board that’s been connecting quality companies with quality employees. While the site isn’t WordPress-specific, they do have occasional listings for those in the field. It’s a great source of general development positions as well.

Listings posted here are top-notch as companies have to pay a premium to list at all — and even more so for a featured spot. That means you won’t ever waste your time wading through poor listings (or fake ones) to find those worth applying to.

This site also offers a great search feature. So if you’re only interested in WordPress jobs, you can use the search filter to weed out anything else.

4. Toptal

Toptal is a bit different from other job boards on this list as it’s not primarily for finding open positions. The site is actually a network of top developers, designers, and finance experts from all over the world.

So if you’re looking to join a team of high-quality professionals, Toptal could be the right place for you. To join, you’ll need to go through a rigorous screening process. However, it’s definitely worth it if you’re looking for top-notch openings. If approved, you’ll have access to some of the best clients in the WordPress industry and can expose your profile to many high-quality companies.

Toptal is a great option for those who are confident in their abilities and are looking to find some of the best WordPress work available.

5. Jobs.WordPress.net

The official WordPress job board is another great place to find quality WordPress work. The site is curated by the WordPress Foundation. Therefore, you can be sure that all of the opportunities listed are high quality and from reputable companies.

The listings update several times per week. They are broken into several categories including: Development, General, Design, Performance, Writing, Plugin Development, Contributor, Migration, Support, Theme Customization, and Translation. You can expect to see between 10 – 20 fresh listings posted each week.

6. Krop

Another source of potential work is Krop, a general job board with a section devoted to WordPress positions. The site doesn’t update as frequently as some of the others on this list but it’s still worth checking out from time to time.

It’s a good source of open positions for those in the general development space as well as graphic design and marketing fields. Plus, It’s a good resource for listings for both remote and in-person gigs.

7. FlexJobs

FlexJobs is a bit different from other job boards as it’s focuses on finding positions that offer some sort of flexibility. This means you can find opportunities with companies that offer remote work, part-time hours, or freelance contracts.

The site isn’t WordPress-specific but they do have a section devoted to web design and development. You can use the search filter to only view WordPress jobs as well. Plus every opening and company that posts has been researched and verified to be legitimate.

8. Smashing Magazine Job Board

Smashing Magazine is one of the most popular resources for web designers and developers. In addition to articles and tutorials, they also have a frequently-updated job board.

There are usually at least a few quality listings coming out each week, though not all of them are WordPress-related. Plus, as Smashing Magazine is such a well-respected resource, you can be sure that any company listed here is reputable. A quick glance reveals positions like web developer, senior interactive designer, UX auditor, and more.

9. Post Status WordPress Jobs

Post Status is a popular WordPress news site that also has a job board with quality listings. The site updates daily with new positions and you can use the handy search filter to only view WordPress-related positions.

In addition to general WordPress jobs, you can also find work in the fields of design, plugin development, support, and more. You’ll find a couple of new listings per week. So if you’re on the active hunt, this is a good one to set a reminder to revisit on a weekly basis just to ensure you don’t miss out on something good.

10. We Work Remotely

As the name would suggest, We Work Remotely is a job board focused on finding opportunities for remote work. This makes it a great option for those who want the freedom and flexibility to work from anywhere in the world.

This site isnâ€™t dedicated to WordPress alone, but they do have a section for design positions. Other categories you can browse include Full-Stack Programming, Front-End Programming, Back-End Programming, Customer Support, Devops and Sysadmin, Sales and Marketing, Management and Finance, Product, and Other.

Companies can post a job to We Work Remotely for $299, which is a pretty hefty price tag. However, that’s great for applicants as it means the available positions are definitely legitimate and those hiring are serious about finding qualified professionals.

11. Brybe

Brybe is a job board that focuses on positions for web professionals. The opportunities posted here span the gamut of web-related fields including WordPress development, design, support, and more.

The site updates frequently and you can use the handy search filter to only view WordPress positions. You’ll find that Brybe is a good source of quality job listings. Those looking to hire post “Buyer Requestsâ€ with a brief description of the work they’d like completed along with an estimate of what they’re willing to spend.

This isn’t necessarily where you’d find a long-term role or a full-time position, but it could be a good place to find gigs. For employers, it’s free to post a request but you may need to shell out a fee for premium-level services.

12. Indeed

Indeed is a popular website to find opportunities across every industry, and it frequently has many WordPress positions. Use the search filter on Indeed’s site to only view WordPress-related listings, which update daily.

This site is such a popular resource that it’s worth a look, even though it’s not dedicated solely to design and development. You can expect to find between 25-50 listings just for WordPress each month, so it’s an active site that’s good to pay a visit to on occasion when you’re on the job hunt.

Should you find a listing you like, you can apply by uploading your resume directly on Indeed or by following the link in the job listing to an external application.

13. Upwork

Upwork is one of the most popular places to find freelance work as of 2023, not just for WordPress. The site lists a large variety of positions, including many that are WordPress-related. You can use the search filter to only view those listings.

The great thing about Upwork is that it gives you the opportunity to apply for short-term or one-off gigs as well as longer-term positions. It’s also a good place to find opportunities if you’re just starting out in your WordPress career since many of the jobs don’t require a lot of experience.

To start off, create a free profile on Upwork and then start applying for jobs that interest you. You can also browse through the “Top Rated” freelancers to get an idea of what kinds of rates and skills are in demand.

14. Codeable

Codeable is a vetted network of WordPress professionals who can help you with everything from developing a custom theme to fixing a plugin issue.

The site hand-picks the freelancers in their network and only accepts the top 2 percent of applicants, so employers can find quality professionals. However, that does mean it will be a challenge to be accepted on the site. If you have the skills though it’s definitely worth a shot as you’ll gain access to some top-tier job opportunities.

15. Problogger

Problogger is a site devoted to helping people grow their blog and build a successful online business. They also have a job board where employers can post a variety of positions including those centered around content creation. Specifically, you’ll often find listings for writers with WordPress knowledge.

Problogger has both full-time and freelance positions available, so it’s worth checking back on the site frequently to see what new openings are available. You do have to sign up for an account to apply for openings. As for employers, they can post a job listing for free. However, it does cost money to have a listing featured.

16. Best Writing

Best Writing is a job board that focuses specifically on writing positions. You can use the search filter to only view WordPress related positions and the site updates regularly with new listings.

You’ll find a wide range of writing gigs from copywriting to SEO content and everything in between. If you’re a freelance writer who specializes in WordPress content, this is definitely a site you should bookmark as there are tech writing opportunities posted here frequently. In fact, there are about three to five fresh listings daily.

You do need a membership to the site, however, to apply to jobs.

Find WordPress Work Today on the Best Job Boards

Whether you’re looking for a full-time job or just some freelance gigs to help pay the bills, these WordPress job boards will help connect you with employers who are looking for workers with your skills.

And since many of the listings on these sites are updated frequently, it’s worth bookmarking them and checking back often to see what new opportunities are available. You never know when the perfect position will pop up!

Which job board have you had the most luck with? Did we miss your favorite? Feel free to sound off in the comments below!

The post Find WordPress Work: 16 Best Job Boards to Help You Get Hired appeared first on Torque.

11.01.2023
Web Design Trends 2023: A Preview of the Future of Web Design

As we move into 2023, it’s important to stay up-to-date on the latest web design trends. Why? Well, for one, it’ll help your website stay relevant and engaging for users. Plus, keeping on top of trends shows that you’re invested in your website and are willing to put in the work to keep it looking its best.

Besides, allowing your site to fall behind the times can make it look dated and out-of-touch. That’s not exactly the impression you want to give to potential customers or clients.

What follows is our in-depth examination of some of the most popular web design trends for 2023. They will give you a clear idea of what’s coming as well as how to prepare yourself for them.

1. Illustrations

Image source: Bear CSS

One of the biggest trends we’re seeing for 2023 is a move away from traditional photography and towards illustrations and graphics. This is likely due to a few factors. Chief among them is the need to stand out in an increasingly crowded online landscape.

With more businesses than ever before launching websites, it’s becoming more difficult to assert your own space. That’s where illustrations come in. Adding a unique and visually-appealing element to your site can help it sit head and shoulders above the rest.

What’s more, illustrations can inject personality into your site, something that is often lacking in today’s online world. This is no more apparent than in the resurgence of the use of cartoon characters on websites. It’s a trend that is sure to continue into 2023.

2. Dark Mode

Dark mode is an increasingly popular way to view content online, and one likely to continue its rise in popularity in 2023. For those unfamiliar with the term, dark mode refers to a color scheme that uses light-colored text on a dark background.

There are a few reasons why dark mode has become so popular. For one, it’s easier on the eyes, especially when viewing content in low-light conditions. Additionally, it can help conserve battery life on devices with OLED or AMOLED screens.

What’s more, dark mode can also make a website look more modern and sleek and less energy hungry. As such, we expect to see more and more sites adopt this trend in the coming year.

3. Minimalism

If youâ€™ve been involved in web design at all over the past several years, youâ€™re familiar with minimalism already. This trend is all about stripping away unnecessary elements and focusing on the essentials.

Image source: WE AIN’T PLASTIC

The goal of minimalism is to create a clean, clutter-free look that’s easy on the eyes and easy to navigate. This happens by using simple, clean designs and layouts with plenty of white space.

Minimalism is especially popular with businesses that want to convey a sense of sophistication and professionalism. However, you can use it on just about any type of website to great effect.

4. Neo-brutalism

Neo-brutalism is a style characterized by its use of stark, geometric shapes and bold, primary colors. It takes its cues from the architectural movement of the same name.

Image source: Nelson Heinemann

While neo-brutalism has been around for a few years, it only recently started to gain traction in web design. This is likely due to the fact that it offers a refreshing alternative in terms of appearance.

If you’re looking to make a statement with your website, then neo-brutalism is definitely worth considering. Just be aware that this style is not for everyone. It’s best suited for sites that are willing to embrace a more avant-garde look.

5. Skeuomorphic Design

Skeuomorphic web design was a strong trend nearly a decade ago but looks set for a full-blown resurgence in 2023. The name refers to the use of real-world objects and textures in digital designs.

Image source: Ahoi Bar

This trend gained traction in the early days of mobile app design, when designers sought to make digital interfaces more intuitive and user-friendly. However, it has since been adopted by web designers as well.

One of the benefits of skeuomorphic design is that it can make a website feel more immersive and realistic. Additionally, it can help users better understand how to use a site or interface, making it ideal for first-time visitors. Plus, it essentially bridges the gap between digital and physical spaces.

6. Monochrome Color Palettes

The monochrome color palette trend involves using a single color for the entirety of a website’s design.

Image source: Heresto Vodka

While this may sound like a recipe for disaster, monochrome designs can actually be quite striking. When done correctly, they can create a look that is both modern and sophisticated.

What’s more, monochrome designs are also incredibly versatile. They suitable for just about any type of website, from personal blogs to corporate sites. Plus, using one color means the rest of your design elements get a chance to shine.

7. Gradients

If you’re looking to give your website a fresh, modern look, consider adding gradients.

Image source: Jam3

Gradients consist of two or more colors that gradually blend into each other. They’ve been gaining popularity in web design over the past few years.

This trend was popular in the early days of HTML and CSS. Designers used gradients to add color and visual interest to their designs. However, it fell out of favor recently as flat design became more popular.

Yet, gradients are making a comeback now because they offer a way to add depth and dimension to a design without sacrificing simplicity. Additionally, they can create a sense of visual movement. This can be particularly effective on landing pages with parallax scrolling.

8. 3D Characters

3D-rendered characters are appearing more frequently as a popular design choice and look to be among the web trends of 2023. This involves using three-dimensional images of people or creatures instead of traditional digital illustrations on websites.

Image source: ChainZoku

3D characters can fulfill a variety of purposes. From adding a sense of fun and personality to a site, to helping users navigate their way around a complex interface.

They offer versatility as well and can skew toward a fun and cutesy style or a more realistic and lifelike look, depending on the needs of the project.

9. All Things Neon

The use of neon colors in web design is also something you see more of recently. This involves using bright colors as part of a website’s aesthetic. Itâ€™s often accompanied by either the look of neon signs or by other retro-inspired designs.

Image source: Bento Box Communications

Neon colors add a sense of fun and personality to a site. They can also help users navigate their way around a complex interface and divert attention to key content areas.

Neon colors are also great for invoking retro styles. So, if you’re looking for a way to add a bit of 80s or 90s nostalgia to your website design, this trend is definitely worth exploring.

10. Interactivity

Another web design trend that looks set to continue heavy use in 2023 years is interactivity. This trend involves making a website’s design more interactive and engaging for users, giving them a more immersive experience.

You can add interactivity to a website in several ways. From incorporating games and quizzes to adding chatbots and other forms of artificial intelligence.

What’s more, interactivity also has the ability to create a more personalized experience for users. For example, you could use data from a user’s previous interactions with your site to customize the content and design of your pages.

Micro-interactions are on the rise as well. This involves adding small, interactive elements to a website’s design, such as hover effects and animated buttons.

Made with Ladda Buttons

Adding interactive elements to your website can liven up the user experience and provide a more pleasant way for users to engage with your content.

For instance, when you add an item to your shopping cart on the Threadless website, youâ€™re greeted by a micro-interaction that confirms the action was a success.

11. Video Backgrounds

If you’re looking to stay ahead of the curve, consider using video backgrounds for your website design in 2023. This growing trend uses video footage as the background instead of a static image.

Image source: Oasen.nl

Use video backgrounds to add excitement and motion to a website or help users understand complex ideas.

In addition, video backgrounds are perfect for creating a realistic experience. If used correctly, they can make a user feel as if they are in the middle of whatever is happening on-screen.

12. Integrated Storytelling

Tell your story through web design with integrated storytelling, a trend set to dominate in 2023 and beyond.

Image source: BorgoVeneto

There are several methods of adding integrated storytelling to a website, such as videos, animations, and interactive elements. Basically, anything that takes the site visitor along for a journey, step-by-step (or click-by-click) through a narrative of some sort.

13. Animation

Animations appear more frequently in web design — so much so this is becoming a trend to keep an eye on in the coming year. As you might’ve guessed, this trend involves incorporating animated elements into a website’s design.

Image source: Pete Nottage

Animations are not only for entertainment purposes; theyâ€™re helpful in explaining difficult topics or challenging concepts as well. If used well, users feel like they are in the heart of the action, creating a sense of immersion.

14. Smart Content Loading

If you want your website to be trendy and efficient, consider smart content loading. This design technique only loads the information a reader needs, making it both faster and more user-friendly.

There are a number of benefits to using smart content loading, from reducing page load times, to saving data usage. Or, you can ise it for personalizing each visitorâ€™s experience.

For instance, if you were to take the hair quiz on the Aveda website, the content you see on your next visit will adapt based on your previous input.

15. Horizontal Scrolling

Horizontal scrolling isn’t new but it has seen a resurgence. This trend can create a more immersive experience for users as they scroll through a website’s content.

Image source: Prevint

From adding a sense of movement to a site to helping users navigate through a large amount of content, horizontal scrolling is effective because it catches most site visitors off-guard and holds their attention.

16. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence in web design is nothing new. However, it’s a trend that looks like it’ll only become more and more popular as time goes on. Using AI to create custom experiences may involve the use of chatbots or taking past user interactions into account.

Not only can artificial intelligence improve efficiencies on your website, but it can also automate tasks like customer support or lead generation. This makes it a great tool for businesses of all sizes.

Take the chatbot, Tidio, as an example. It relies on AI to generate life-like conversations for customer service situations.

Set Yourself Up for Success by Following These 2023 Web Design Trends

As you can see, there are a number of exciting web design trends set to take off in 2023. You certainly don’t need to implement all of them on your site. However, by keeping up with the latest trends, you can ensure that your website is always fresh and up-to-date.

So, if you want to stay ahead of the curve, make sure to keep these trends in mind for your next website design project.

Are you keeping up with the latest web design trends? Will you be adding any to your site in the coming year? Please let us know below!

The post Web Design Trends 2023: A Preview of the Future of Web Design appeared first on Torque.

04.01.2023
8 Best Social Media Scheduling Tools (Free & Paid)
Why would you need social media scheduling tools? Well, think of any business out there – it can be from any industry or of any size. What are the odds that the business has active social media profiles? Pretty high, right?

Social media has long become a crucial part of digital marketing. Back in 2015, 43% of businesses were already spending six hours per week on their social media efforts. A couple of years and a pandemic later, this number has likely increased by leaps and bounds.

But, isn’t there a way to lighten the load a little?

The answer to that question is social media scheduling tools. They allow you to automate many aspects of social media marketing, from scheduling posts to providing analytics and maintaining a database. In short, social media scheduling tools can make your life much easier and below, you find some of the best that 2022 has to offer.

Social Media Scheduling Tools You Should Definitely Try Out

Finding the right tool for yourself can be difficult. That’s why we are taking an in-depth look at some of the best options below.

1. SproutSocial

First up on the list is SproutSocial. It stands out with a number of advanced features, complex functionality, and smooth UI. The software also supports all major social media platforms out there, including Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest, and even WhatsApp!

Main Features

With SproutSocial, you can schedule multiple types of posts across different platforms, profiles, and campaigns ahead of time. Simply choose the posting time you desire or let the tool decide the ideal time through its send time optimization feature.

In addition, all your scheduled posts are organized across one simple, intuitive calendar that gives you a weekly and monthly view of upcoming publications. Besides that, whether you want to assign tags and sort through posts, add team members to collaborate, or handle your audience interactions in one place — with SproutSocial, you can do it all.

In addition, it’s real-time in-depth analytics help you keep check on where your marketing efforts are headed. Track your progress by setting up custom reports, scheduling periodic updates, and much more.

Another feature that makes SproutSocial stand out is social media listening. With it, the tool provides vital data on the latest industry trends and audience sentiments. You can stack your data against competitor insights to run comparisons too!

While SproutSocial has many wonderful features, it does come with a drawback. It’s not only one of the most expensive tools on the market, but also only offers paid subscriptions. This means that this tool might not be the best option for smaller businesses and agencies (though there is a free trial).

Pricing

Plan Price

Standard $89/user/month

Professional $149/user/month

Advanced $249/user/month

2. Hootsuite

One of the oldest players in the market, Hootsuite offers some of the most advanced features out there. In fact, what makes this tool unique is that it offers more than just social media scheduling. Instead, Hootsuite acts as an overall content assistant. It not only supports the usual suspects (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.) but also WordPress and email marketing tools.

Main Features

With its account-specific social media analytics, Hootsuite allows you to seamlessly track your results by time frame. Its ability to connect with tools like Brandwatch and Talkwalker also gives you access to essential industry insights right from your dashboard.

In fact, what makes Hootsuite truly stand out is its vast repository of app integrations. With a directory of 150+ apps, exchanging data across tools couldnâ€™t be easier.

For example, Hootsuite integrates with CRMs like Salesforce and Zendesk, which makes customer data readily accessible for your social media marketing. You can even use the toolâ€™s ReviewTrackers integration to keep tabs on your brandâ€™s popularity. This integration captures reviews across 85 websites and compiles them all in one place so that you can understand your customers’ demands and complaints.

Unfortunately, Hootsuite does not come without drawbacks. Users have voiced complaints about the toolâ€™s cluttered interface. Moreover, with its high-cost plans, this is also not the tool for businesses with small budgets.

Pricing

Plan Price

Professional $49/month

Team $249/month

Business $739/month

Enterprise Custom

3. CoSchedule

Following Hootsuite is CoSchedule with its straightforward features, efficient functionality, intuitive interface, and affordable prices. Its marketing calendar lets you schedule updates on networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr!

Main Features

The best part about CoSchedule is its fantastic free plan. It allows you to publish posts on up to two social media profiles ahead of time at no cost. However, if you want to access some of the more advanced features of the tool or schedule more posts in advance, you may want to check out the paid plans.

The biggest advantage with CoSchedule is how much it facilitates content repurposing and recycling. It allows you to pull content directly from blog posts and repurpose them into social media posts. You can also use its reports to find your best performing social media content and recycle them using the “requeue” feature.

Apart from features and functionalities, what makes CoSchedule stand out is its kanban project dashboard.

In case you are not aware, a kanban board is an agile interface layout. It’s often used in project management to make organization and workflow easier. Here, you get a broad view of all your ongoing projects, can organize and collaborate with teammates on these projects, and monitor your entire workflow to prevent bottlenecks.

Clearly, CoSchedule is a wonderful tool. However, compared to other tools, its functionalities can be a bit basic. Marketing teams that want to double down on social media might find it limiting.

Pricing

Plan Price

Marketing Calendar Free $0/user/month

Marketing Calendar Pro $29/user/month

Marketing Suite Custom

4. Buffer

Next on the list is Buffer. It comes with a straightforward, minimalist interface and inexpensive plans. The networks covered by Buffer are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, Google Business profiles, Shopify, and Instagram.

Main Features

This is definitely the most beginner friendly option and suitable for those who might get overwhelmed by advanced features. In fact, Buffer is a social media scheduling tool in the truest sense. Its primary functionality is solely to line up posts for the future, with some simple add-on features included in the paid plans.

With Buffer, you can only access some fundamental analytics and insights, even with the paid plans. This includes individual post analytics such as impressions and shares, as well as audience demographic insights such as audience age and location.

The primary reason Buffer stands out is its focus on Shopify. It gives you access to analytics for your Shopify store for unique insights on your sales patterns. This is a very handy feature for small business owners and eCommerce stores who want to optimize their socials for sales success.

Another reason why Buffer stands out is its ability to build simple landing pages in a matter of minutes. Moreover, the feature also allows you to track metrics such as the clicks and impressions of your page.

With its simplistic structure, Buffer is a dream come true for beginners. Unfortunately though, the tool might not be ideal for many businesses that want to be more strategic with their social media marketing plan.

Pricing

Plan Price

Free $0/month

Essentials $5/month/channel

Team $10/month/channel

Agency $100/month/channel

5. MeetEdgar

Last but not least there is MeetEdgar. Offering all the features needed in social media scheduling toola, this one stands out because of its content repurposing features. You can use MeetEdgar to manage your updates on Instagram,TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google Business Profile.

Main Features

With MeetEdgar, you can do it all: schedule posts, access analytics, and automate your workflow with integrations. But where the tool wins hearts is its advanced content repurposing and recycling features.

Every piece of content you post through MeetEdgar is saved in a limitless content library. You can sort through it based on content performance and analyze patterns in your posts and the audienceâ€™s response. Even better, you can also recycle your best performing posts quickly and easily.

With MeetEdgar, repurposing content becomes a breeze too. The toolâ€™s machine learning technology pulls relevant information straight from your long-form content so you can translate it into new social updates.

Overall, MeetEdgar is a great tool to reap the long-term benefits of reusing successful content. However, where it falls short as a tool is its inability to reorganize your queue. This means you cannot reschedule a post to a later date unless you delete and create it all over again.

Pricing

Plan Price

Eddie Annual Plan $24.91/month (paid annually)

Edgar Annual Plan $41.58/month (paid annually)

Bonus! 3 Additional Tools That Almost Made It to the Top

Didnâ€™t find the right fit among these five tools? As a bonus, here are three additional contenders.
- SocialPilot — The team behind SocialPilot calls it â€œeverything you need to hit your social media marketing goals at an AMAZING priceâ€. They certainly deliver. It supports the usual supects and provides seamless scheduling, in-depth analytics, and smooth collaboration features. Standout features include the ability to schedule the first comment on Instagram posts, add ALT text to images, and track traffic on your socials. Pricing starts at $25.50/month.
- Sendible — Sendible acts as your complete content companion. It covers the expected social platforms plus Google My Business, YouTube, Tumblr, WordPress, and even Medium. If numbers excite you, Sendible is the perfect tool with its in-depth real times analytics functionality. In addition, the toolâ€™s sentiment analysis and automation feature provides you with multifaceted insights for your campaign performance to keep improving. Pricing begins at $29/month.
- Agorapulse — Agorapulse is one of the most unique social media scheduling tools on the market. The best part about this tool is how it makes sorting your scheduled posts so much easier. All the client data you collect is automatically stored in an in-built CRM. This lets you sort and organize your posts based on labels to locate and retrieve them easily. There is a free plan, paid plans are at least $79/month.
Social Media Scheduling Tools to the Rescue!

The importance of social media in marketing should not be understimated. It’s also is only bound to increase in the upcoming years.

In such a situation, having the right automation tools to assist your efforts can save you a lot of time and effort. It can also help you collect feedback and fine tune your marketing strategy.

The above social media scheduling tools are among the best in the market. Use this collection to further research your preferred candidates so you end up with exactly the features you are looking for.

Do you use a social media scheduling tool in your business? Which tool would you recommend? Drop your answers in the comments below!

The post 8 Best Social Media Scheduling Tools (Free & Paid) appeared first on Torque.
22.12.2022
How to Use Google Trends for SEO and Better Web Content

If you have a website or work in the content space, chances are, you’ve used Google Trends at least once to see what’s popular on the Internet. But did you know that you can also use Google Trends for SEO?

It’s true. Google Trends can help you understand what people are searching for, and how that changes over time. This information can be incredibly valuable when it comes to creating content people actually want to read.

So if you’re looking for a way to boost your web traffic, or simply want to ensure that your content is relevant and searchable, then keep reading. We’ll show you how to use Google Trends to your advantage.

But first, a definition.

What is Google Trends?

Google Trends is a tool that allows users to see how often people search for particular terms on the internet. It also shows how these searches have changed over time.

You can use this for both personal and commercial purposes. For example, you might use Google Trends to track the popularity of a new product. Or, you could use it to see how interest in a certain topic develops over time.

You can also use Google Trends to compare the popularity of two or more terms. This can be useful for understanding how the public receives different products or topics.

All of this information is useful when trying to understand what people are interested in. Knowing that helps to create content that they are more likely to read and share.

Now let’s explore how you can use Google Trends for SEO and improving your web content.

1. Use Keyword Data to Create Relevant Content

One of the most valuable things that you can get from Google Trends is keyword data. This information helps ensure that your content contains the words and phrases that people are actually searching for.

To start, simply enter a keyword or phrase into the Google Trends search bar. You’ll then be presented with a graph that shows the interest in this keyword over time, its popularity in various subregions, as well as a list of related terms and how popular they are.

This data is a great indicator to determine which keywords and phrases you should be using in your content. For example, if you see that a particular keyword is becoming increasingly popular, you may want to consider including it more often in your articles. On the contrary, if you see that a certain phrase is losing popularity, you may want to avoid it altogether. Likewise, your searched keyword can spawn numerous related keywords you may wish to optimize for.

2. Follow How Search Trends Change Over Time

In addition to showing you how popular a particular keyword or phrase is, Google Trends can also let you know how search demand fluctuates over time. This information is valuable when you’re trying to understand why certain topics are becoming more or less popular.

To view this data, simply search for a keyword or phrase then view the Interest Over Time graph. It will also tell you which countries are searching for these terms the most.

For instance, when searching for â€œpencils,â€ interest increases around the back-to-school shopping season from July – September then tapers off for the rest of the year in the United States.

At the same time, it is relatively flat year-round when opened up to a worldwide search.

3. Monitor Your Competitors

In addition to understanding people’s interests, you can also use Google Trends to keep tabs on your competition. Monitoring competitors is essential for any business, and Google Trends can give you unique insights into what they’re up to.

To do so, simply enter the name of your competitor into the Google Trends search bar. You’ll then be able to see how popular their brand is, as well as the historical trend.

Use this data to understand whether or not your competitor is gaining or losing popularity. Or, use it to see if there are any sudden spikes in interest, which could indicate that they’re running a new marketing campaign.

A good example of putting this into practice would be if you saw that a competitor’s brand was suddenly trending for a specific keyword set. You could then look at that keyword set and see if there were any opportunities for you to create content around those same keywords.

4. Stay Up-to-Date on Current Trends

Another great way to use Google Trends for SEO is to stay up-to-date on what’s popular. This can be useful for a variety of different purposes, such as understanding what people are talking about on social media, or keeping tabs on the latest newsworthy events.

First, simply enter the name of a current trend into the Google Trends search bar. You’ll then be able to see how popular that trend is, as well as where it creates the most buzz.

Content creators and marketers alike can make use of this information. If you notice that a certain type of content tends to perform better in one region than another, you can localize your content strategy to focus on producing more pieces like it for the former region.

Or, if you see that a trend is losing popularity, you may want to avoid creating content around that topic.

Basically, using this tool can give you insights into what’s hot at the moment, even if you don’t regularly follow the news or top hashtags. Going to the daily search trends can be illuminating as well, since you can view what is currently trending and whether or not you may be able to capitalize on that.

5. Make Full Use of Google Correlate

Google Correlate was a Google Labs tool that has now been discontinued. It worked by uncovering topics people were interested in, and assisting you in deciding what to write about. It also helped with discovering new related topics that were currently trendy.

Though the official tool is no longer available, its features are a part of Google Trends. Within Trends, you can find relationships between different search trends or any other data point. This is an underutilized aspect because many people are unaware of its existence.

Simply enter a phrase into Google Trends and you’ll see other search terms linked to it. For example, if you type in “backpacks,” you will see results like “cool backpacks for kids” and “carhartt backpack”.

Researching new content topics is essential to maintaining a high-traffic website. These terms can help you identify potential gold mines for topic ideas that are both relevant to your target audience and have a high bar of quality. For example, the suggested keywords make it easy to come up with new content topics. “Cool Backpacks for Kids” is pretty much already a blog post title. For the other keyword you could do something like “Carhartt Backpack Review.”

So you can see how taking this approach can yield extremely helpful results for generating new content ideas as well as exploring the raltions between key terms.

6. Create a Content Calendar for the Coming Months

Once you’ve used Google Trends to understand what people are interested in and which keywords and phrases they’re using, you can use this information not just for SEO but also to create a content calendar.

This will help you to plan and organize your content and make it more readable and shareable. First, simply enter the keywords and phrases that you want to write about into a spreadsheet.

Then, use the data from Google Trends to determine when these terms are most popular and plan your content accordingly. This will help ensure that your articles come out at the time when their popularity is at its peak. For example, below you can see that interest in “weight loss” peaks both around New Year’s (all those resolutions kicking in) and then again shortly before summer season.

Or, you can use a content planning tool to keep your keyword research, potential titles, and to-be-published data organized and in one place. A few great options that are compatible with WordPress include CoSchedule, Editorial Calendar, and Strive.

Each of these tools will help you to better plan and organize your content. This, in turn, can lead to more traffic and engagement.

7. Create a More Cohesive Brand

Google Trends can help you create a more cohesive brand as well. To do this, simply enter your brand name into the search bar and see what frequently associated terms come up. This data is really helpful in understanding how people perceive your brand. It shows which keywords and phrases you should use in your marketing initiatives.

For example, if you see that a particular keyword often comes up in relation with your brand, you may want to use it in your social media posts or on your website. Doing so could help you to reach a wider audience and attract more attention to your brand.

An even more effective approach is to use local trends to create content that is timely and relevant to those interested in your product or service type. For example, a coffee shop could use local search data to target those who are interested in iced coffee during the summer months.

With a clearer idea of these local search trends, you can build a brand that is more in touch with the needs and wants of your target audience.

Now if your brand doesnâ€™t have a huge reach and doesn’t produce Google Trends results, not to worry. You can still make use of this tool to aid in the task of brand building. You will just need to center your searches on competitor’s brand names or more general, industry-specific keywords.

8. Increase Your Chances of Going Viral

Finally, using Google Trends can increase your chances of going viral. Understanding what people are in interested in and which keywords and phrases they’re using is a great basis for creating popular content. Enhancing that with country or location-specific information to make the content more useful to a niche audience makes it more likely that it will hit a nerve and go viral.

In addition, you can use potential keywords from social media and input them into Google Trends. This can help you unlock content ideas that will go viral both in search and in social.

Conclusion: Use Google Trends for Content Creation and SEO

By now it should be clear: Google Trends is a powerful tool to improve your web content. By understanding trends and popular keywords and phrases, you can more easily give people what they are looking for.

This, in turn, can lead to more traffic and engagement for your website. So, if you’re struggling in these areas, be sure to give Google Trends a try.

Do you have any additional tips for using Google Trends for your SEO and content efforts? Any secret strategies we missed? Share them with us in the comments below.

The post How to Use Google Trends for SEO and Better Web Content appeared first on Torque.

07.12.2022