Every writer needs a website and if you know how to install it, I think there’s no better way to create a website than with WordPress.

Once you’re up-and-running, you need some good plug-ins to really enhance your site and differentiate it from the crowd. Here is my highly subjective list of the Top 10 WordPress Plugins for authors and writers. I’m using Digital Nature’s Mystique theme which is pretty intensive, so I opted for light-weight plugins when possible so as not to increase load time.

Here are the plug-ins that work for me and work great with Mystique, in no particular order:

All in One SEO Pack – There’s no better way to get your website recognized by the search engines than starting here.

Aweber – If you have a newsletter, you’re probably using Aweber to build your email list. If so, this plugin puts a sign-up form in a WordPress widget.

Cbnet Ping Optimizer – As a writer, I edit my material time and again. This plugin keeps WordPress from alerting the search engines every single time you make a change on an already-published document.

Digg Digg – I love it! Add social vote buttons for Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Google Buzz and more. Lots of configurations. These are the buttons you see above and below this article.

Facebook Like Box – Hopefully you have a Facebook page, and this plugin allows you to display a box about it on the side of your blog so readers can quickly become a fan.

Fast and Secure Contact Form – A nice, simple contact form that blocks spammers, but also doesn’t use java or jQuery, so you’re not taxing your server with additional requests.

Link to Post – When I write, I often mention one of my previous articles. This plugin makes it easy to link to something you published before while writing your current story.

ShareThis – Another social media plugin, this one gives readers even more places to share what they read on your blog. A nice way addition to Digg Digg.

Smart Video – The web’s going video and this plugin allows you to quickly insert a YouTube video in a post.

WP RSS Images – This plugin puts the first image in your post also in your RSS. Great for giving your subscribed readers a little flavor.

That’s it! All these plugins works beautifully with WordPress and Mystique by Digital Nature. If you have a WordPress blog, what plugins do you swear by and why?

Anyone who has a presence online knows the power of engaging in social media—whether it be through your own blog, Facebook, Twitter, Linked In or other services. But it’s not long before you discover that keeping up with your social presence on the web can be a full time job!

The good news is, there are now a few services out there that link your social media outlets together—so you can automate the process. I’m writing this post because over the past couple days, I’ve spent hours researching, using trial-and-error, getting frustrated, looking for answers…and then finally figuring out how this “linking” of social media works.

The funny thing is, as hard as I looked, I couldn’t find any current definitive answers to making this work on other blogs or forums, so I was left to figuring a lot of it out myself. It’s partly my own fault—I had one particular needs going in which I’ll explain in a moment.

So here’s what I set out to do: I wanted to be able to make a post on my personal blog and then have notification of that post broadcast across the web, alerting anyone following me on other services. I was most concerned about linking up Twitter and LinkedIn…and—here’s the tough one—my Facebook Page, but not my Facebook Personal account.

Personal Blog –> Twitter, Facebook Page, LinkedIn, etc.

I looked at WordPress plugins since I use WordPress, hooking multiple services together, Facebook apps, etc. What I finally arrived at was a pretty simple—and consistently workable—answer. In my next post, I’ll lay out step-by-step exactly what I did. Do the same and you’ll be good to go.

Photo: Social Media Dataflows by silvertje

Go to Part 2: Hellotxt setup

Go to Part 3: Twitterfeed setup

Go to Part 4: Testing it out