Former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli is generally given credit for saying “There are three kinds of lies; lies, damned lies, and statistics”  and then there is this Lifehacker poll- which doesn’t show the results- but says most of the geeks reading the popular blog think WordPress rocks.

They mixed 2 ides in this post- one on the best blog backend- and one on plug-ins- but we’ll forgive them (we just didn’t make the same mistake).

Lifehacker, the Productivity and Software Guide

In our recent web publishing poll, the overwhelming majority of Lifehacker’s blogger readers said that WordPress was the only way to get their words out to the world (so much so that the poll actually seems to have broken).

If you jump to the poll- the comments are helpful for learning too-

but, it’s our experience right now- that WordPress is the best for getting you to the top of Google- and that makes all the difference right now. If you are interested in having us come give a seminar to your group or organization- please feel free to contact us.

Writing for me is easy. Writing for some of you is hard.

Creating great content is the key to getting more visitors- so all you English majors out there- rejoice, your diploma may be worth something again. Chris Pearson has a post about content that’s worth reading- so here is the link and an excerpt:

Pearsonified | Best damn blog on the planet.

When you first got into blogging, I’m betting that refining your copywriting skills was likely the last thing on your mind – I certainly wasn’t thinking about it! Five months in, however, I see that developing this skill will pay huge dividends in launching future ventures, regardless of whether they take place online or offline. Simply put, being able to write great copy is one of those transferable skills that I talked about last time – it can help to set you free.

1. Some tips I find useful- google what you want to write about- and then write about what you find (that’s how this post is being done- with the help of the Pressit function of WordPress). You can also set up a Google alert on your subject to find things for you.
2. Look at your webstats search terms- then combine them in new ways- with meaningful insight- which should help you promote your search rank in the future. See this post.
3. Ask your readers questions- and see where they take you with their comments- I read a post by Mark Cuban today about the future of movies- he had over 568 responses. I wrote about it.

A common complaint we get about using WordPress to run a site is “I don’t want my site to look like a blog” which generally means- I want the same old content up – and nothing ever changes. Chris Pearson talks about the Information Architecture of RSS – and how it can stop readers from finding content- Pearsonified | Best damn blog on the planet.

It’s worth reading- as are the comments- but, here is what Chris is missing- there are only 3 ways people find your site:

• You spend a ton of money building your brand and promoting your URL

-or-

• They find your site through search- which means you have great content and great search engine placement

-or-

• you’ve built great link networks, or are heavily linked to (hopefully not by spamming comments)

That’s it- once they find you- they either bookmark (favorite) you conventionally- or they subscribe to your feed. If they do the former- they may never come back- if they do the latter- hopefully, they’ll keep coming back as long as you deliver the content that interests them.

If they are smart enough to use RSS- then they know they can search your site for more data- a different layout, or navigation structure won’t matter at all.

However, after reading this, it made me want to add some plug-ins for most commented articles to The Next Wave site.

My solution, would be to use a variation on webstats to drive the most popular pages- not based on comments- or, to put some kind of rating system into the post options- so that you could use a theme switcher type plug in to re-order the site in different ways.

Either way- read what Chris wrote- it should get you thinking.